IITs, IIS Course Material Available Online; Poor Usability
Looks like the MITs OpenCourseWare initiative has found takers in India: As a part of a Rs. 110 crore government project, the seven Indian Institute of Technology and the Indian Institute of Science plan will offer their course material online, reports Mint. Rs 20.5 crore has been invested in Phase I, with 240 courses developed for five streams – civil, computer science, electronics and communication, electrical engineering, and mechanical engineering. The National Programme for Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL) is believed to have signed deals with service providers, including, for making text and videos available online, though Google (NSDQ: GOOG) India has declined to comment. As with most government initiatives, the interface, navigation and usability are awful. Try clicking on the HTML links in the page here: the popup window is too small to display anything but a fraction of the page. What a waste. Anybody remember Sakshat?
Indianrailway information website http://indianrail.gov.in or booking website irctc.co.in is perfect example for this..
just compare http://indianrail.gov.in ( by Govt.) and erail.in ( by some private company)… erail.in is doing nothing but fetching data from indianrail.gov.in but still it's many times faster than that.
"Rs 20.5 crore has been invested in Phase I"
…whatever.
I would love to know HOW that money was spent. Rs 20.4 CR to plan the entire deployment and Rs 0.1 CR to actually do the work.
[quote]Try clicking on the HTML links in the page here: the popup window is too small to display anything but a fraction of the page.[/quote]
Nikhil its your screen resolution setting. Looks good @ my computer. It opens up in full width. I am not sure if that has anything to do with your screen resolution.
IM: I tried the same page with IE and Opera – the popup is fine, though one cant resize the window. The window is too small with firefox….anyway, the simplest way to do this is to open the page in a new window, rather than restrict users to popup that cannot be resized.
I found the courseware at Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of ICT (DA-IICT) very user friendly. Its basically a courseware used insde the campus but they have started to allow guest access to few courses.
http://courses.daiict.ac.in//course/view.php?id=45
http://courses.daiict.ac.in/
- was anyone actually able to WATCH a video from this page?
http://web.iitd.ac.in/eklavya/video/index.htm
- I tried to give them some well-meaning feedback: http://web.iitd.ac.in/eklavya/contact/feedback.htm. The form doesn't work, of course….and Dr. Sen doesn't like responding to emails
- They might as well have had a "Do not contact us page" and gotten a point for transparency
looks like only syllabus they have provided on website. Its utter useless ……..
I think we need to file RTI about all these ……..
hey
the courseware facility is not too easy to access though it is good.
LearnNext is a computer-based learning system for you to study your entire CBSE syllabus from home!
It is a one stop solution to better your grades and clear your concepts. And, you get to do this at your convenience, following your own schedule and pace.
Driven by technology, developed by gurus, LearnNext offers you a stimulating new world of learning with exhaustive questions, problem solving methods, customised study plans and self-assessments. You can also clear your doubts through the “Ask your Teacher” section. What’s more, you get free trial packages to learn the unique benefits LearnNext offers.