Free NPTEL courses offer flexibility, but have riders too
No doubt the Covid-19 pandemic has boosted the online education sector with many students opting for free online certification courses, maybe to strengthen their resumes or to improve their career or professional prospects.
Shiksha spoke with students, who enrolled in the National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL) courses, to understand the problems, privileges and their motive behind enrolling in such courses. NPTEL is a joint initiative of the IITs and IISc, Bengaluru, and offers free courses to students and working professionals.
Video lectures, a pleasant break from mundane classroom teaching
Anirudh Guleria, a final-year student of Civil Engineering at Jaypee University, Waknaghat, Solan, said, “I opted for Applied Environmental Microbiology NPTEL course from IIT Roorkee. The duration of the course was 12 weeks, which I was able to complete. Since final NPTEL exams have been postponed, a certificate of completion will be issued on the basis of aggregate marks obtained in assignments. If a person scores 40% or above, he/she gets the certificate.”
He said, “I think the course will help in my career development. The best part of NPTEL courses is that they offer flexibility and convenience. I just watched video lectures provided by the NPTEL based on which I submitted my weekly assignments. There was no headache of attending classes.”
NPTEL courses provide exposure to diverse career options
Noel Jones, who completed soft skills course from NPTEL, IIT Madras, said, “NPTEL courses provide so much value whether it is about providing exposure to courses from diversified fields or filling in credits (only if you earn a certificate), especially for electives, which are of limited number and limited capacity in college.”
He said, “I opted for NPTEL soft skills course as I felt learning such skills is essential for our professional life. The course taught me a lot and made me a better individual. This will certainly help me in my career. Also, I have enrolled in another NPTEL course, English Language for Competitive Exams, to improve my vocabulary skills. I think this will help me in preparing and scoring well in competitive exams.”
Studying while work was difficult, so opted out of course
Sonia Raheja, who is currently doing PhD in Physics, said, “I had opted for NPTEL Computational Physics course from IIT Kanpur to learn languages such as R Programming and Python. I attended classes for two weeks and could submit only one assignment as I was also teaching in a school, so it was difficult to manage both simultaneously.”
She said, “But I will enrol in the same course again as these courses are free and also, I know that it will benefit me in my career and professional life.”
Withdrew from course in 3 weeks due to lack of practical knowledge
Bhanu Tandon, who is currently a teacher in Chandigarh, said, “I took up an NPTEL course related to Data Science from IITM. I enrolled in this course to acquire a new skill and improve my employability as there are very less job opportunities in my field, i.e. physics.”
He said, “It was an eight-week course, but I withdrew only after completing three weeks as I found that it was more of a theoretical course. I wanted to gain more practical knowledge as one understands the text better through practice.”
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Online classes are good, but they have their own challenges, say IITians
