IIT Bombay launches its own Moocs

The institute has added significant functionality to Open edX platform to create and offer MOOCs from IITBombayX

The Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay (IIT Bombay) will launch IITBombayX, the eXtended online educational services from the institute for the benefit of Indian learners, and training workshops for teachers.

IIT Bombay has added significant functionality to the Open edX platform to create and offer MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) from IITBombayX.

This includes modifications to make it suitable for blended MOOCs and Indian language interfaces. This would be extended in future to also cover the special needs of school education and vocational training.

IITBombayX will also simultaneously offer training workshops for teachers on 'effective teaching and mentoring students in online courses', for each of these three subjects, under T10KT (Train 10,000 Teachers) Project.

College teachers will now be trained on how to effectively enhance the learning of students, by mentoring the students of online courses. They will be trained to do this through discussion forums, as also through face-to-face interaction with students of their colleges who register for MOOCs. Faculty from IIT Bombay will be arranging live interactive sessions every fortnight, for such students and teachers.

Students will get an honour certificate of achievement certifying successful completion of the course after they have qualified in the tests.

Speaking on the benefits for these courses for Indian students, Prof. Phatak remarked, "students normally learn similar subjects and topics as part of their degree course. Our online courses will give them an exposure to the teaching and learning style of the IIT system, with its emphasis on solving hard problems, interactive discussions, explanation of difficult concepts, and continuous assessment with feedback. We believe that this will help them to further extend their knowledge of the subjects, and their skills in solving associated practical problems".

The courses will be launched in both English & Hindi on Republic Day and will be gradually made available in other Indian languages as well. The courses are likely to commence in first week of March 2015. Registrations start in February 2015.