5 ms·

The NPTEL videos are a major public good. It is a shame that for the longest time, MIT OCW's CS & Math lectures were the only high-quality course-videos on the

by screye 3y ago

The NPTEL videos are a major public good. It is a shame that for the longest time, MIT OCW's CS & Math lectures were the only high-quality course-videos on the internet. Leveraging the IIT system to get 100% course coverage over every possible engineering course is genius. It has democratized education better and earlier than any unicorn. (Coursera, Udacity, etc.). Everything from assignments to It is an indictment of American universities that despite having the funding, resources and technology to do this a lot earlier, it was eventually a 3rd world country that pulled it off. All without any profit motive. "Non-profit universities"?, yeah right. Just take a look at the courses on offer - https://nptel.ac.in/courses https://nptel.ac.in/courses . Every imaginable engineering specialization is on offer, down to the most obscure. University classrooms do not seem to have caught up to just how easy it is to access this information. Most professors do not have the same caliber or flair to do better than the best NPTEL video. I would like to new coursework designed around integrating video lectures of this sort as integral part of engineering instruction, with the in-person professor taking on the role or assistance and disambiguation, rather than being an inferior repeater of the same information.

albert_e 3y ago
Thanks i live in the country and have previously devoured MOOCs ...but never heard of this! Bookmarked! https://nptel.ac.in/ https://nptel.ac.in/
thr_msc 3y ago
Is there playlist for those videos? A find them every so often but the names mean I can never find the full course.
- gourabmi 3y ago
  https://nptel.ac.in/ https://nptel.ac.in/
- 1024core 3y ago
  https://nptel.ac.in/courses https://nptel.ac.in/courses
renewiltord 3y ago
It's actually interesting. UC Berkeley had to take down their videos since they weren't subtitled (and therefore not ADA compliant). There's an interesting industry around this. I wonder if they could have sold a license to them to me for $1 and then I would be free to put them on the Internet. Alternatively, perhaps the YouTube automated captioning would have been sufficient.
- SSLy 3y ago
  Right now whisper would probably be good enough™ to caption them.
  - BitwiseFool 3y ago
    I'm jaded because I know there is a cottage industry of attorneys who go around suing for ADA violations. I wouldn't be surprised if there is some special interest group that goes around claiming automated captions aren't good enough and using them violates their client's civil rights.
    - bee_rider 3y ago
      Isn’t that literally the enforcement model of the ADA? It isn’t a special interest group so much as attorneys engaging with the system as it was designed, right?
      - BitwiseFool 3y ago
        The challenge is that these attorneys aren't acting in good faith, they're doing it for profit. Although they purport to advocate for the rights of the disabled, their business model is to find violations, however small, file a suit, and then offer to settle for several thousand dollars. Most of these lawsuits happen without an actual disabled person (who isn't the attorney) raising a complaint in the first place. There was a semi-famous example of an attorney suing Chipotle because the counter was too high and he claimed that he was being denied the full Chipotle experience of seeing the food be prepared in front of him. The workaround of literally bringing the food to him tableside and preparing it in front of him there was not deemed good enough, and Chipotle lost the suit. As you can imagine this attorney makes quite a bit of money going around suing people, for reasons the average person would not find genuine. "Chipotle argued that its accommodation was adequate and told the Supreme Court that Antoninetti lacked standing to sue. The company cited a federal judge's findings in 2008 that Antoninetti had sued numerous businesses over disability access and had not shown that he was sincere about intending to return to the restaurants if they lowered their barriers." https://www.sfgate.com/nation/article/Chipotle-loses-disabled-access-case-2374553.php https://www.sfgate.com/nation/article/Chipotle-loses-disable...
SSLy 3y ago
your response got cut off
- screye 3y ago
  yeah, wrote it in a train of thought and didn't review/proofread it. my bad.
1differential 3y ago
you sir, have ruined my weekend with a treasure trove of material.
arjie 3y ago
One of my classes at IIT-M from 15 y ago or so is there holy shit. Haha! So what would happen is they'd put this single camera operator at the back of the class behind the last row. There was only one classroom where we had it. The prof must have been mic'd up because the audio comes through quite clearly. We weren't told to act any specific way or anything and no students were told explicitly that it was for NPTEL. But it wasn't recorded in a studio, just a normal classroom with students.
0xpgm 3y ago
> It is an indictment of American universities that despite having the funding, resources and technology to do this a lot earlier, it was eventually a 3rd world country that pulled it off. I assume knowledge discovery and sharing doesn't depend on your country's world status. A lot of fundamental knowledge was discovered and passed down to us from ancient times by people who would consider life in the so-called third world countries to be a significant upgrade.
- screye 3y ago
  It's a bad look because the idea and technology were there and the execution is low cost. Presumably, American universities wanted to 'protect' their information from others, maintaining exclusivity and gating off knowledge. It is this 'profit seeking behavior' that's shameful.
ren_engineer 3y ago
I learned probably 90% of my math knowledge from YT videos and Kahn Academy. The fact is that the odds you get a decent teacher at a public school or even university are low, while the internet allows you to access the absolute best people in the world at explaining and conveying information for your selected topic. it's like school choice at global scale, why learn from a person you happen to be geographically located close to at school when you can learn from the best? Combine that with some of the new AI personal tutor tools coming out and I don't see how traditional schooling competes beyond acting as day care while parents work. And even at the college level a huge number of professors are obviously not passionate or skilled at teaching their subject and class sizes are too large to give student specific feedback. I'm really looking forward to when you can take a placement test and have AI look at your work and solutions and then tell you exactly where the gaps in your knowledge are and create a study plan. So many people struggle with math because they didn't properly learn lower level fundamentals and without a good tutor you can't figure out what you need to learn. I feel like AI is getting to a place where it can probably get there, something like the GPT and Wolfram Alpha integration
- 999900000999 3y ago
  I absolutely can't wait for AI language tutors. Private tutoring is extremely expensive and if an AI could do it, even if it's not as good I imagine everyone could have their own private AI language tutor. AIs never get frustrated or tired
  - tormeh 3y ago
    > AIs never get frustrated or tired I don’t think you can make effective AI without them having boredom/frustration. Otherwise they might do very unintelligent things, like trying the same approach to a problem forever.
light_hue_1 3y ago
> It is an indictment of American universities that despite having the funding, resources and technology to do this a lot earlier, it was eventually a 3rd world country that pulled it off. I don't understand why this needs to so adversarial but for what it's worth, American universities do already provide videos. You mentioned OCW, but EdX does so too, Berkeley did what NPTEL is doing a decade ago. Many universities do so piecemeal. Remember, that if an entity is a nonprofit, that entity still needs to raise money from somewhere. It needs to show statistics about how impactful its efforts are. The main reason why there isn't more of this is because its educational value as far as we can tell is marginal, pretty close to zero, at best. For example, if a course already exists on OCW, the value of having another course from another university seems very low. Why would someone pay for another archive of a course at another university? Then there are the completion statistics. They show that virtually no one completes MOOCs. OCW and EdX numbers show the same. It's hard to find anyone to give money to these programs. Now, we might be measuring the wrong thing. In the US if you want to study something you will definitely find a university to do it. It could be that there is great value when the baseline you're comparing to is Nigeria. That's just not what US or EU universities look at in terms of numbers. How could they and who would they pitch this to for funding? It's extremely expensive to keep a video archive like this up to date. NPTEL videos contain what in the US would be considered copyright violations on their slides. You cannot imagine how much effort OCW has to go into to avoid this. You simply couldn't do what NPTEL is doing in the US. For what it's worth, I think we should relax IP laws, but it is what it is. I'll say this for the NPTEL archive. The quality is extremely variable. From a few really good courses, to a lot of rather poor ones, to things like the "Modern Computer Vision" course recorded in 2022 that was "modern" in maybe 2013-2014. Also for educational value, I agree with the US numbers. If you look at the most popular youtube videos called out in the article, they're not like the NPTEL archive. Dry courses presented in textbook order. They're much more interactive, much deeper dives, that slowly walk you over some piece of material from different points of view. More like Khan academy than OCW.
- screye 3y ago
  > Berkeley did what NPTEL is doing a decade ago NPTEL has been doing this for a good 20 years now. > EdX does so too In my experience, EdX videos feel like the pop-sci version of the real course. Some excellent courses are 1:1 copies of OCW courses (6.0.31), but most others have been disappointing. I transitioned from MechE to CS/ML, so I have spent a lot of time wading through sub-par Edx courses (and on other platforms), before finding the good ones by pure brute force. > needs to so adversarial My experience at American universities is that the professors and teachers are wonderful. But, the administration operates on ruthless profit seeking incentives, which often leads to worse outcomes for the nation as a whole. I am not adversarial per se. I just expected better from universities I deeply respect. > virtually no one completes MOOCs. OCW and EdX Which is exactly why I am a big advocate of just releasing the videos and assignments. Let people do it at their own pace, and quit at their own pace. > NPTEL videos contain what in the US would be considered copyright violations on their slides. You cannot imagine how much effort OCW has to go into to avoid this. Haven't thought of this. I might be a good point. Could you give an example ? I am not fully aware of the kind of copy right violations that occur on slides. Either ways, glad India treats IP laws with the kind of reckless abandon it deserves.
rajeshp1986 3y ago
Found some really interesting courses like this one: Introduction to Launch Vehicle Analysis and Design, IIT Bombay https://nptel.ac.in/courses/101101086 https://nptel.ac.in/courses/101101086

by screye 3y ago

albert_e 3y ago

Thanks i live in the country and have previously devoured MOOCs ...but never heard of this! Bookmarked! https://nptel.ac.in/ https://nptel.ac.in/

thr_msc 3y ago

Is there playlist for those videos? A find them every so often but the names mean I can never find the full course.

gourabmi 3y ago
https://nptel.ac.in/ https://nptel.ac.in/
1024core 3y ago
https://nptel.ac.in/courses https://nptel.ac.in/courses

renewiltord 3y ago

It's actually interesting. UC Berkeley had to take down their videos since they weren't subtitled (and therefore not ADA compliant). There's an interesting industry around this. I wonder if they could have sold a license to them to me for $1 and then I would be free to put them on the Internet. Alternatively, perhaps the YouTube automated captioning would have been sufficient.

SSLy 3y ago
Right now whisper would probably be good enough™ to caption them.
- BitwiseFool 3y ago
  I'm jaded because I know there is a cottage industry of attorneys who go around suing for ADA violations. I wouldn't be surprised if there is some special interest group that goes around claiming automated captions aren't good enough and using them violates their client's civil rights.
  - bee_rider 3y ago
    Isn’t that literally the enforcement model of the ADA? It isn’t a special interest group so much as attorneys engaging with the system as it was designed, right?
    - BitwiseFool 3y ago
      The challenge is that these attorneys aren't acting in good faith, they're doing it for profit. Although they purport to advocate for the rights of the disabled, their business model is to find violations, however small, file a suit, and then offer to settle for several thousand dollars. Most of these lawsuits happen without an actual disabled person (who isn't the attorney) raising a complaint in the first place. There was a semi-famous example of an attorney suing Chipotle because the counter was too high and he claimed that he was being denied the full Chipotle experience of seeing the food be prepared in front of him. The workaround of literally bringing the food to him tableside and preparing it in front of him there was not deemed good enough, and Chipotle lost the suit. As you can imagine this attorney makes quite a bit of money going around suing people, for reasons the average person would not find genuine. "Chipotle argued that its accommodation was adequate and told the Supreme Court that Antoninetti lacked standing to sue. The company cited a federal judge's findings in 2008 that Antoninetti had sued numerous businesses over disability access and had not shown that he was sincere about intending to return to the restaurants if they lowered their barriers." https://www.sfgate.com/nation/article/Chipotle-loses-disabled-access-case-2374553.php https://www.sfgate.com/nation/article/Chipotle-loses-disable...

SSLy 3y ago

your response got cut off

screye 3y ago
yeah, wrote it in a train of thought and didn't review/proofread it. my bad.

1differential 3y ago

you sir, have ruined my weekend with a treasure trove of material.

arjie 3y ago

One of my classes at IIT-M from 15 y ago or so is there holy shit. Haha! So what would happen is they'd put this single camera operator at the back of the class behind the last row. There was only one classroom where we had it. The prof must have been mic'd up because the audio comes through quite clearly. We weren't told to act any specific way or anything and no students were told explicitly that it was for NPTEL. But it wasn't recorded in a studio, just a normal classroom with students.

0xpgm 3y ago

> It is an indictment of American universities that despite having the funding, resources and technology to do this a lot earlier, it was eventually a 3rd world country that pulled it off. I assume knowledge discovery and sharing doesn't depend on your country's world status. A lot of fundamental knowledge was discovered and passed down to us from ancient times by people who would consider life in the so-called third world countries to be a significant upgrade.

screye 3y ago
It's a bad look because the idea and technology were there and the execution is low cost. Presumably, American universities wanted to 'protect' their information from others, maintaining exclusivity and gating off knowledge. It is this 'profit seeking behavior' that's shameful.

ren_engineer 3y ago

I learned probably 90% of my math knowledge from YT videos and Kahn Academy. The fact is that the odds you get a decent teacher at a public school or even university are low, while the internet allows you to access the absolute best people in the world at explaining and conveying information for your selected topic. it's like school choice at global scale, why learn from a person you happen to be geographically located close to at school when you can learn from the best? Combine that with some of the new AI personal tutor tools coming out and I don't see how traditional schooling competes beyond acting as day care while parents work. And even at the college level a huge number of professors are obviously not passionate or skilled at teaching their subject and class sizes are too large to give student specific feedback. I'm really looking forward to when you can take a placement test and have AI look at your work and solutions and then tell you exactly where the gaps in your knowledge are and create a study plan. So many people struggle with math because they didn't properly learn lower level fundamentals and without a good tutor you can't figure out what you need to learn. I feel like AI is getting to a place where it can probably get there, something like the GPT and Wolfram Alpha integration

999900000999 3y ago
I absolutely can't wait for AI language tutors. Private tutoring is extremely expensive and if an AI could do it, even if it's not as good I imagine everyone could have their own private AI language tutor. AIs never get frustrated or tired
- tormeh 3y ago
  > AIs never get frustrated or tired I don’t think you can make effective AI without them having boredom/frustration. Otherwise they might do very unintelligent things, like trying the same approach to a problem forever.

light_hue_1 3y ago

> It is an indictment of American universities that despite having the funding, resources and technology to do this a lot earlier, it was eventually a 3rd world country that pulled it off. I don't understand why this needs to so adversarial but for what it's worth, American universities do already provide videos. You mentioned OCW, but EdX does so too, Berkeley did what NPTEL is doing a decade ago. Many universities do so piecemeal. Remember, that if an entity is a nonprofit, that entity still needs to raise money from somewhere. It needs to show statistics about how impactful its efforts are. The main reason why there isn't more of this is because its educational value as far as we can tell is marginal, pretty close to zero, at best. For example, if a course already exists on OCW, the value of having another course from another university seems very low. Why would someone pay for another archive of a course at another university? Then there are the completion statistics. They show that virtually no one completes MOOCs. OCW and EdX numbers show the same. It's hard to find anyone to give money to these programs. Now, we might be measuring the wrong thing. In the US if you want to study something you will definitely find a university to do it. It could be that there is great value when the baseline you're comparing to is Nigeria. That's just not what US or EU universities look at in terms of numbers. How could they and who would they pitch this to for funding? It's extremely expensive to keep a video archive like this up to date. NPTEL videos contain what in the US would be considered copyright violations on their slides. You cannot imagine how much effort OCW has to go into to avoid this. You simply couldn't do what NPTEL is doing in the US. For what it's worth, I think we should relax IP laws, but it is what it is. I'll say this for the NPTEL archive. The quality is extremely variable. From a few really good courses, to a lot of rather poor ones, to things like the "Modern Computer Vision" course recorded in 2022 that was "modern" in maybe 2013-2014. Also for educational value, I agree with the US numbers. If you look at the most popular youtube videos called out in the article, they're not like the NPTEL archive. Dry courses presented in textbook order. They're much more interactive, much deeper dives, that slowly walk you over some piece of material from different points of view. More like Khan academy than OCW.

screye 3y ago
> Berkeley did what NPTEL is doing a decade ago NPTEL has been doing this for a good 20 years now. > EdX does so too In my experience, EdX videos feel like the pop-sci version of the real course. Some excellent courses are 1:1 copies of OCW courses (6.0.31), but most others have been disappointing. I transitioned from MechE to CS/ML, so I have spent a lot of time wading through sub-par Edx courses (and on other platforms), before finding the good ones by pure brute force. > needs to so adversarial My experience at American universities is that the professors and teachers are wonderful. But, the administration operates on ruthless profit seeking incentives, which often leads to worse outcomes for the nation as a whole. I am not adversarial per se. I just expected better from universities I deeply respect. > virtually no one completes MOOCs. OCW and EdX Which is exactly why I am a big advocate of just releasing the videos and assignments. Let people do it at their own pace, and quit at their own pace. > NPTEL videos contain what in the US would be considered copyright violations on their slides. You cannot imagine how much effort OCW has to go into to avoid this. Haven't thought of this. I might be a good point. Could you give an example ? I am not fully aware of the kind of copy right violations that occur on slides. Either ways, glad India treats IP laws with the kind of reckless abandon it deserves.

rajeshp1986 3y ago

Found some really interesting courses like this one: Introduction to Launch Vehicle Analysis and Design, IIT Bombay https://nptel.ac.in/courses/101101086 https://nptel.ac.in/courses/101101086