Minutes of the NPTEL PIG Meetinq. llT Madras on March 10.2007

The NPTEL PIC meeting was held in llT Madras on 10/03/07 from 10:30 am onwards in

the Conference room of Bose-Einstein Guest House, llT Madras, Chennai.

Members present:

1. Prof. M. S. Ananth, Director llT Madras, Chairman, NPTEL Project lmplementation

Committee

2. Prot. M. Singaperumal, TEL Coordinator, llT Madras

3. Prof. K. Mangala Sunder, NationalWeb Coordinator and TEL Coordinator, llT

Madras

4. Prot. K. R. Srivathsan, Director !llTM Kerala, Member

5. Prof. Kushal Sen, National Video Coordinator and TEL Coordinator, llT Delhi

6. Prof. A. K. Ray, TEL Coordinator, llT Kharagpur

7. Prof . T. K. Basu, Chairman, CET, and TEL Coordinator, llT Kharagpur

8. Dr. Bani Bhattacharya, TEL Coordinator, llT Kharagpur

9. Prof. Rajiv Tiwari, TEL Coordinator, llT Guwahati

10. Prof. Satyaki Roy, TEL Coordinator, llT Kanpur

11. Prof. Bikash Mohanty, TEL Coordinator, llT Roorkee

12. Prof . K. Gopakumar, TEL Coordinator, llSC Bangalore

Summary of discussions:.

1. The proposal for continuing NPTEL project through the next phase was

discussed in detail. !t was decided to request the Chairman, Prof. M. S. Ananth,

to submit the Phase !l proposal to MHRD. The continuation of Phase I to Phase

ll without any break period is vital to the project as more than seventy staff

members who have been trained for executing Phase I can be continued in

Phase !!. Otherwise, enormous efforts and costs would be required to retrain new

staff members in all Pls. The total budget outlay for the next phase of the project

2.

is Rupees 93.5 crores. lt will add a service - oriented architecture to the 345

courses from Phase I as well as to the and 500 courses to be developed in

Phase-l!. The details of the proposal are presented in the annexure to the

minutes.

The PIC members were requested to obtain formal permission from the

respective llT Directors for NPTEL to join the MIT OCW Consortium. The

request to join the consortium was first made by OCW Director in MlT. Dr.

Anne Marguelis after Dr. Mangala Sunder presented the NPTEL Programme

details to the OCW team in MlT, Cambridge, USA, at their invitation.

The Committee acceded to the request of the NPTEL coordinator of llT Bombay

to formulate Copyright clauses of NPTEL project be formulated using the

Creative Commons lndia (CCl). Prof. K. Mangala Sunder and llT Bombay TEL

Coordinators will request Prof. Jha, the CCI coordinator in llTB for an appropriate

CC! license which would be included in the NPTEL Website. The main objectives

of the copyrights are to ensure that the lP ownership of the contents rest with the

faculty and that there is free and fair distribution of contents to colleges and

students without unfair practices and unauthorized use by intermediate vendors.

The lT Secretary, Kerala government has requested NPTEL PIC to nominate

lllTM Kerala to be the web services provider for NPTEL courses in the state of

Kerala. Once they are offered through the web, they can be accessed by any one

else outside of Kerala as well. The PIC members agreed and requested Prof. K.

R. Srivathsan, Director, lllTM Kerala to submit a budget for inclusion in the

Phase ll proposal. Professor Srivathsan requested that an appropriate amount of

funding be also allocated in Phase ll for developing network protocols, practices

related to lT services and research into the technology and pedagogy for

providing sustained and effective learning through the web. He suggested that

lllTM Kerala has enough qualified faculty and graduate students to carry out

research related to implementation, pedagogy and quality parameters for online,

web based education and proposed llITMK to be the nodal lnstitution

collaborating with all Pls.

3.

4.

5. It is very important that the video courses should be made available in astreaming media format for institutions to install them in a local server for access

by students on demand. ln order to convert the DVCam files for more

than 6000 lecture-hours within the next three months to ensure that both web

and video contents are available for the Academic session commencing in

July 2007, it was suggested that members obtain video encoding and

streaming facilities under this project. Apple offers the best media

conversion/compression facilities in the world. A bit rate of 512 kbps with H.264compression which is an IEEE standard and offered by Apple is recommended

as sufficient for viewing video lessons on a VOD server. A Committee consisting

of Prof. Kushal Sen (llT Delhi), Prof. A. K. Ray (llT Kharagpur), Prof. Satyaki Roy

(!lT Kanpur), Prof. Bikash Mohanty, llT Roorkee, Prof. K. R. Srivathsan, lllTM

Kerala and Prof. K. Mangala Sunder, llTM was constituted. The purchase

procedure for video encoding by llT Madras is recommended for adoption by

interested Pls to minimize the time of setting up such a facility and to ensure

uniformity among partners.

The PIC members agreed to share equally among all the eight Pls the expenses

for the newspaper advertisement in connection with the NPTEL inauguration on

September 3, 2006 by the Honorable Minister for HRD, Shri. Arjun Singh. The

total cost for the advertisement is Rs. 1 5, 57, 671 (Rupees fifteen lakhs fifty

seven thousand, six hundred and seventy one) and the bill has been directed by

the MHRD to NPTEL project for payment.

The next NPTEL National Workshop will be conducted in New Delhi on March

30, 2006 and this would be followed by one in llT Kharagpur and one in llTKanpur / llT Roorkee. The dates for the workshops will be finalized soon through

e-mail exchanges.

The details of the first National workshop on NPTEL in Thiruvananthapuram were

summarized along with the feedback given by all participants There was

unanimous praise for the initiative and for the meticulous care with which the

workshop was conducted by lllTM Kerala. The PIC Chairman suggested that the

feedback be circulated to all the faculty coordinators, discipline coordinators and

6.

7.

8.

principal discipline coordinators and other members associated with the NPTEL

project.

9. The Chairman PIC requested all NPTEL coordinators to complete all the

remaining project activities as soon as possible.

10. lt was decided to approach the Chairman AICTE to help in the distribution and

use of NPTEL course materials as useful supplements to all Engineering

lnstitution in lndia. The PIC will provide recommendations on technical solutions

which are minimally required to be set up in user institutions in order to stream

video contents in their own intranet. This would also substantially reduce the

cost of internet bandwidth required in llTs/ !lSc to stream video contents for users

al! over the world.

The Meeting ended with a note of thanks to the Chair.

Minutes bv

hII,'^{/^ SryD,K. Mangalarsunder, llT Madras, March 16,2007

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