Seven top IITs, firms like Infosys, TCS, Cognizant and industry lobby Nasscom have joined hands to offer several free, online courses with an aim to help out 100,000-150,000 people in a year to get high-quality education and prepare for the job market. Read on to know the top 6 most important things about the courses including course structure, faculty, certification and more:
MOOCs platform
The courses will be introduced by using the model of massive open online courses (MOOCs), which is famous across the world for higher education. The first three courses in computer science are likely to roll out this October. “This programme is particularly relevant to India because of the high number of young students who need to be educated and trained,” says Lakshmi Narayanan, vice-chairman, Cognizant.
Participating IITs and companies
The seven participating IITs are: Delhi, Madras, Kharagpur, Kanpur, Roorkee, Bombay and Guwahati. The companies on board include: Infosys, TCS, Cognizant and IT industry lobby Nasscom. This is the largest industry-academia association to aid professionals and students get access of top-quality course content and meet specific demands of the industry.
Faculty
Around 15 faculty members, who hail from seven older IITs, who are designing the courses at present, will be offering guidance to students.
Course structure
IITs will roll out three mini modules of a computer science course initially, such as programming, algorithm, and data structures. There will be 12 lectures in each module and students are expected to attend a total of 36 lectures spread across 12 weeks.
Certification
People enrolling for these courses will be eligible to appear for exams by paying a minimal fee and get certificates. While, IITs will give certification for the computer science courses, students will get certificates from the industry for foundation courses. There is also a possibility of getting a joint certification from IITs. According to Andrew Thangaraj, associate professor of electrical engineering at IIT-Madras, “Students from second year onwards in science and engineering from any college can take the courses that will be offered multiple times a year.”
Google, Cognizant to provide infrastructure
While Google is offering its Course Builder platform to host MOOCs, HackerRank will offer their web portal to enable students practice their programming assignments and also get them verified and evaluated. Cognizant will be responsible to making its infrastructure available at its training facilities in off-peak times, such as weekends, to help students take tests and get certified.
