Virtual IIT - Will it work?

The Joint Entrance Exams (JEE) conducted by Indian Institutes of Technology is one of the toughest exams in the world for engineering admissions. While the exam serves the purpose of selecting the best and the brightest students to enter the elite engineering club of India; it also deprives the opportunity to many equally talented students because of the restriction in intake capacity.

But better late than never; IITs are now opening their gates to larger group out there. "We basically want to make quality education accessible to many more students using modern tools instead of setting up brick-and-mortar campuses.", said M S Ananth, director of IIT-Chennai. The proposal has been approved by National Mission on Education through ICT (NMEICT). The details of the plan are yet to be worked out and it will be rolled out over the next two years. IITs plan to involve industry in program administration. Lot of investment will go in setting up laboratories where students will be able to perform experiments.

#-Link-Snipped-#IITs and IISc have already began developing courses and over 240 courses have been developed. In the second phase over 1000 more courses will be developed. The union HRD ministry has allotted INR 4600 crore for three years till March 2010. With so much of money and time involved in this ambitious project there are couple of challenges that might come in the progress of this project.

1. Developing software & infrastructure to support Virtual Campus:

Even though India has marked its presence in global software industry; India lacks the originality in creating software. Although the project heads are proposing 2-3 years of timeframe; the actual implementation of the project might take seveal more years. By the time the system is implemented, the rest of the world would have moved far ahead to make the system outdated. How rapidly this system gets developed and deployed would be interesting thing to follow.

2. Administrating exams:

Having gone through four year engineering course in India, I know how difficult it is to adminster engineering exams. If the exams are setup with the IIT level; would there be enough professors/lecturers to evaluate the exams and deliver the results within time? With current education system in India it would be very difficult to make the exams objective type. Administrating engineering exams is going to be one major challenge in virtual IIT campus.

3. Professor - Student interaction:

Even though students will be able to watch the lecutres delivered by IIT professors, what about the interaction between professors and students? What if a student does not understand a point explained by the professors and wishes to ask questions to the professor? How will the problem-solving occur?

4. Making the students interested in engineering:

In India, most of the students take up engineering not for the love of it; but for the sake of seeking short-cut to getting a job. How would Virtual IIT campus solve this problem; or for that matter, find out students who are geniunely interested in engineering?

What is your take on Virtual IIT project? Will it work? Why?