The All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) has approved advanced National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL) online certification courses for Faculty Development Programmes (FDP) for engineering college faculty under Career Advancement Scheme. A Memorandum of Agreement to this effect has been signed between NPTEL and AICTE. There are a total of 141 courses in the July-December 2018 period.
Highlighting the benefits of the initiative, Prof. Dileep N. Malkhede, Advisor-I (Research, Institute and Faculty Development), AICTE, said, "Due to limited opportunities available for faculty to attend face-to-face, residential fulltime training programs, faculty promotions under CAS are adversely affected. The one-stop solution to overcome all such problems is to register for the NPTEL-offered online courses."
Self-assessment is made possible through weekly assignments and the final in-person proctored examination provides for certifying the learning that has taken place.
Further, Prof. Dileep Malkhede added, "These courses are latest and can be attended at lower pace from anywhere and still at par with conventional FDPs. Joint certification by AICTE-NPTEL makes it authentic and recognizes it for promotions under CAS. Faculty members should take benefit of these courses."
A four-week week NPTEL course will be recognized as a half-week FDP, an eight-week NPTEL course as a one-week FDP and a 12-week course as 1.5-week FDP. This development eliminates the need for engineering college faculty to travel for FDPs, cutting down on time and cost. As the courses are online, they can be taken from anywhere across the country.
NPTEL offers a wide variety of courses and faculty can also do courses from other discipline. Courses on of cutting-\edge technology such as Block Chain Management, Deep Learning, IoT and Smart Cities would also be offered.
"We hope that this initiative will encourage more faculty members across the country to upgrade/refresh their knowledge more easily. This initiative where faculty completing NPTEL advanced courses being recognized by AICTE will be a great boost to the teaching community. We also hope that bodies such as University Grants Commission (UGC) will also approve the same for the teachers under colleges affiliated to them," Prof. Andrew Thangaraj, NPTEL coordinator at IIT Madras said.
Every semester the list of courses approved for FDP by AICTE would be published on NPTEL website and announced by AICTE as well as a notification to colleges. Faculty members of institutions can benefit from these FDPs.
Statistics from the past few semesters show that a large number of faculty have also actively participated in this process:
- Jan-Apr 2017: 5,300+ out of 44,000 candidates taking up examinations
- July-Nov 2017: 12,309 out of 70,000+ candidates writing examinations
- Jan-April 2018: 16,024 out of 87,000 candidates writing examinations
NPTEL was initiated by seven Indian Institutes of Technology (Bombay, Delhi, Kanpur, Kharagpur, Madras, Guwahati and Roorkee) along with the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore in 2003.
NPTEL is the largest provider of MOOCs in India today, especially the Engineering stream, with a credible proctored certification exam that clearly qualifies and differentiates the learners who do these courses.
The list of eligible courses is given at nptel.ac.in/fdp.html.
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