Virtual university to be launched by Premier science and technology institutes
Bryan Dalton, Acting Consul General, U.S. Consulate in Chennai,
presenting the first prize to Rajat G. Bhusan of
M Ananth, Director IIT-M
informed in an award function for
the winners of Blog contest on US-India
relations in Chennai on Thursday that
the nation`s premier science and
technology institutes would be launching a virtual university in a few years`
time. Mr. Ananth said that the National Programme on Technology Enhanced
Learning (NPTEL) was receiving a large number of hits on youtube.com.
Initially, the IITs and IISc had developed 240 courses for the Ekalavya
channel to reach out to students across the nation through Web and video. As
the channel was not effective, an IIT alumnus working in youtube.com came
forward to post the content on the Net to help in the spread of science and
technology.
“We hope to launch a virtual university in a few years,`` Mr. Ananth
said. The IITs and IISc will partner with other premier institutes to produce
about 600 courses to make the virtual university a reality. The need to offer
Web courses was necessary as the number of students entering engineering has
tripled from 3 lakh students from the time he assumed office as IIT-M Director
to 9 lakh students at present. With fewer takers for the less attractive
teaching profession, the brick and mortar model would not work, he said.
Besides, the teacher`s role in future could well be restricted to teaching the
student to discriminate between actual information and the so-called
info-noise.
Bryan Dalton, Acting Consul General, U.S. Consulate General, Chennai,
and Robert Kerr, Acting Public Affairs Officer, U.S. Consulate General,
Chennai, gave away the prizes to the blog winners. Rajat G. Bhusan won a
laptop. N. Krishna Kumar won a desktop computer and Sujay Babruwad won an iPod.
Tom Tillo, K. Shameer and V.P Aneesudheen won an iPod shuffle each as
consolation prizes.
