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IIT's virtual labs proposal fails to get funded
By siliconindia
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Thursday, 07 August 2008, 17:17 IST
New Delhi: As an aid for the growing learners for engineering courses, Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) proposed for setting a virtual 'on the web' lab. However, it can be a forgotten thing of the past, as this 
50 crore project has received no reaction from the Ministry of Human Resource development.
M.S. Ananth, IIT Madras Director's proposal is conceptualized on the grounds of Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (MIT) iLabs, who have developed various remote experiment labs and was also boosted by the popularity of the National Programme for Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL), which has now 70, 000 students. Through that IIT had put some of its engineering courses online, including civil, computer science, electronics and communication, electrical and mechanical. While 129 courses are available on the NPTEL website in HTML and PDF formats, the 110 video courses are regularly broadcast on DD Eklavya. This year, NPTEL is putting these 110 courses on YouTube.
Surendra Prasad, Director of IIT Delhi, told Mint, "We want at least 500 courses to be ready and uploaded on NPTEL. Virtual labs on the Web would help students to carry out experiments equivalent to lab experiments." The virtual labs take away some of the mundane tasks, like number crunching, "As a result, they're likely to do more problems or investigate further," says Johns Hopkins University, chemical engineering professor Michael Karweit.
Currently, IIT-Madras is in the forefront of putting together an online learning program that will lead to distance education graduates from India's most prestigious technical institutions.
50 crore project has received no reaction from the Ministry of Human Resource development.
M.S. Ananth, IIT Madras Director's proposal is conceptualized on the grounds of Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (MIT) iLabs, who have developed various remote experiment labs and was also boosted by the popularity of the National Programme for Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL), which has now 70, 000 students. Through that IIT had put some of its engineering courses online, including civil, computer science, electronics and communication, electrical and mechanical. While 129 courses are available on the NPTEL website in HTML and PDF formats, the 110 video courses are regularly broadcast on DD Eklavya. This year, NPTEL is putting these 110 courses on YouTube.
Surendra Prasad, Director of IIT Delhi, told Mint, "We want at least 500 courses to be ready and uploaded on NPTEL. Virtual labs on the Web would help students to carry out experiments equivalent to lab experiments." The virtual labs take away some of the mundane tasks, like number crunching, "As a result, they're likely to do more problems or investigate further," says Johns Hopkins University, chemical engineering professor Michael Karweit.
Currently, IIT-Madras is in the forefront of putting together an online learning program that will lead to distance education graduates from India's most prestigious technical institutions.
