Now that NPTEL has moved to Phase 2 we have content being added in several subjects, in different formats…what steps are being taken to create awareness about NPTEL across various colleges?
We've been circulating many brochures to colleges. I conduct workshops, we also have two or three partners, who are now taking it forward through the website, and also through their networking management processes. They run large scale workshops and also advertise through the workshops. They involve students by conducting contests, which sort of brings the students into it, and from the students it spreads into other institutions.
So when the students come to the website, do they look at it as reference material?
Yes, for most of the students, it is reference material. These days AICTE is also encouraging colleges to get NPTEL as a digital library material, in fact, it has made it mandatory for colleges to have it .This way, AICTE is also helping us to advertise about the NPTEL content. We provide the material free of cost to colleges. Earlier, colleges had to pay for it, because we were not clear about the funding issues, but now since MHRD is fully supporting this project and it's our mandate to make it free, colleges can actually get people to our site. Colleges can download everything from the website as the videos are now in free download format. They can directly download or they can take it in the hard disk. We copy it for them free of charge and we help them in case they need to set an Intranet in their colleges.
Now moving on to the teacher’s perspective, we understand that most of them are new to using technology in classroom, they may feel inhibited. What initiatives are being taken to make the teachers feel comfortable in using the NPTEL content?
Yes, it is a good point. We have teacher orientation workshops where we inform the teachers, with the help of subject matter experts, on the specific topics of their interest. We run two kinds of workshops, one of them is what I offer, pertaining to general awareness: this deals with topics like, ‘where the material is’, ‘what it is useful for’, or ‘how the syllabus is organized’, and so on. The second type of workshop isfor specific teachers who teach a particular subject. They may interact with the professor who created the course one to one for a day or two. This kind of faculty/course specific workshop we have been running in all the IITs. We are also encouraging private institutions to run such course specific workshops not for their institution alone but for a community of institutions, that's how NPTEL supports teacher empowerment.