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I am so happy that NPTEL NOC[1] and NPTEl Lectures [2] and Swayam[3] exists. These are indian government funded Moocs on almost everything engineering [1] http

I am so happy that NPTEL NOC[1] and NPTEl Lectures [2] and Swayam[3] exists. These are indian government funded Moocs on almost everything engineering [1] https://nptel.ac.in/noc/noc_course.html https://nptel.ac.in/noc/noc_course.html [2] https://nptel.ac.in/course.html https://nptel.ac.in/course.html [3] https://swayam.gov.in/explorer https://swayam.gov.in/explorer

truth_ 5y ago
Quality of most of the courses is horrible, and nowhere nearly comparable to what you get from a Harvard or MIT course. The professors use very old PowerPoint slides and they themselves are not interested in teaching. Programming problems are dull and boring. However, there are exceptions. The Discrete Math course taught by IIT-Ropar is among the most amazing introductory DM course I have ever seen- taken in person or online. There's also a 40 lecture Japanese course which is also quite good. Indian schools are highly credentialist, so it is worth checking the backgrounds of the Professors beforehand. Do they have degrees from abroad? Are they interesting persons? And so on. Only then enroll in an NPTEL course.
Arun2009 5y ago
I have surveyed these, but in general, they simply don't come anywhere close in quality to that of courses offered by edX. An example that readily comes to mind are the courses on manufacturing processes offered by both MITx and NPTEL. The MITx course was clearly a class apart - you actually got to see the processes in question and how they were applied in the real world factories. When speaking about how a product was made, the lecturer actually bothered to bring samples of those products, sometimes dismantled them, and showed us how they could have been put together. I only audited this a few months ago, and to this day I remember the concepts vividly. On the other hand, in the videos I watched, the NPTEL course lecturer simply read out from powerpoint slides, which he prepared from a standard textbook. You were better off reading the textbook directly than watching the video alternating between the slides and the lecturer's face. It was a very uninspiring, depressing experience.
xNeil 5y ago
Second this. They're genuinely amazing, with IIT professors teaching their subjects (for engineering). It's basically Indian OCW.

truth_ 5y ago

Quality of most of the courses is horrible, and nowhere nearly comparable to what you get from a Harvard or MIT course. The professors use very old PowerPoint slides and they themselves are not interested in teaching. Programming problems are dull and boring. However, there are exceptions. The Discrete Math course taught by IIT-Ropar is among the most amazing introductory DM course I have ever seen- taken in person or online. There's also a 40 lecture Japanese course which is also quite good. Indian schools are highly credentialist, so it is worth checking the backgrounds of the Professors beforehand. Do they have degrees from abroad? Are they interesting persons? And so on. Only then enroll in an NPTEL course.

Arun2009 5y ago

I have surveyed these, but in general, they simply don't come anywhere close in quality to that of courses offered by edX. An example that readily comes to mind are the courses on manufacturing processes offered by both MITx and NPTEL. The MITx course was clearly a class apart - you actually got to see the processes in question and how they were applied in the real world factories. When speaking about how a product was made, the lecturer actually bothered to bring samples of those products, sometimes dismantled them, and showed us how they could have been put together. I only audited this a few months ago, and to this day I remember the concepts vividly. On the other hand, in the videos I watched, the NPTEL course lecturer simply read out from powerpoint slides, which he prepared from a standard textbook. You were better off reading the textbook directly than watching the video alternating between the slides and the lecturer's face. It was a very uninspiring, depressing experience.

xNeil 5y ago

Second this. They're genuinely amazing, with IIT professors teaching their subjects (for engineering). It's basically Indian OCW.