IITs Going Online

Today's papers talked about a plan by the premier technical education institutes to go online so that a much larger segment of students can access the course material. This is going to take couple of years. What is of concern though, is if the standards of the students taking these courses will be at par with the students who sit in the classes and take the regular exams etc.

This is central to all off-campus curses conducted by any university. It is generally considered to of lower grade than attending full time at a brick and mortar institution. Today, you can have any kind of access, touch points that a regular institution provides through  the Internet. The central issue is if appropriately designed. I am sure any educational plan designed by the IITs can take care of such issues.

More crucial question is can the standards be maintained with such on-line access.Unless that can be done, when a graduate coming out through the regular program and a student finishing the course on-line are indistinguishable, such a program can be meaningful. This problem is central to the perception that all such distance learning courses suffer from. I wonder how they are going to ensure the uniformity of the quality!