Are you a engineering student studying in a one of the recently mushroomed private engineering colleges, in need of quality faculty? Then put your worries to rest. You can have access to experienced faculty from the IITs and IISc on your engineering subjects (Civil, Computer Science, Electrical, Electronics and Communication and Mechanical) through National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL) – nptel.iitm.ac.in. It is a programme funded by the Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India. Its objective is to enhance the quality of engineering education by developing curriculum based on video and web courses.

In India fully qualified and trained teachers in engineering constitute a small fraction. Most of the teachers are young inexperienced and undergraduate degree holders. Thus this is a joint initiative from seven IITs and IISc, NITs and other leading universities in India to provide teaching content of high quality through effective use of technology. The large gap that exists in the level of faculty in institutions of higher learning such as IITs and those in private and other government aided engineering institutes in India can be bridged to a certain extent through these courses.

129 web courses and 110 courses in video format in engineering/ science and humanities have been developed. Each course has materials that cover in detail 40 or more one hour lectures (approximately 4500 hours) giving a comprehensive study of your subject. (The numbers are likely to change soon as the web site is being continuously updated).This is the first phase. The second phase will give you an additional 1600 hrs of lectures. When completed this will be the largest video repository of technical courses in the world in streaming video format

The complete list of courses available can be viewed here – http://nptel.iitm.ac.in/pdf/NPTEL%20-%20List%20of%20Available%20Courses.pdf. The video lectures can be directly accessed at http://www.youtube.com/iit. Content of the above courses are based on the curriculum suggested by AICTE

These courses will also be helpful for those employed in industries and other walks of life, who require continuous training and updating their knowledge. It will helpful for the teaching community which will in turn result in the improvement of the quality of students.

The content of this website is owned by the Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India, IITs/IISc and the faculty. Web and video contents developed in the first phase are available free of cost to all Government engineering colleges and Government aided Institutions approved by the AICTE. If you have broadband connectivity, you can download the video from the link http://www.youtube.com/iit. The details as to how institutions and individuals can access the contents is given in the FAQ section – http://nptel.iitm.ac.in/faq.php