Indian Institute of Technology Madras is coordinating a national effort to create crash courses for rural learners that will be telecast on educational television channels.

Around 300 hours of video lectures have already been delivered under this initiative. The first broadcast is scheduled for August 28. This new content will be broadcast on NPTEL Channel 11-18 until August 31 and rescheduled on Channels 11-16 from September 1, says a release from IIT Madras.

The objective is to help rural students who could not attend classes due to the Covid-19 lockdown. The focus is to create crash courses with an emphasis on problem-solving approaches. The lectures were recorded by faculty of various central universities from their homes. The schedule of lectures are available and will be updated on the DTH SWAYAM Prabha website: https://www.swayamprabha.gov.in/

Swayam Prabha is a group of 32 DTH channels devoted to telecasting of educational programmes on a 24X7 basis using the GSAT-15 satellite. The content would be repeated several times during the day, allowing the students to choose the time of their convenience. The contents are provided by NPTEL, IITs, UGC, CEC, IGNOU, NCERT and NIOS. The INFLIBNET Centre maintains the web portal.

Faculty members have laid emphasis on conceptual understanding, problem-solving approaches and case studies, besides worked out examples.

The regular 40-50-hr lectures of were condensed into 10-15 hours. Lectures were deliveredto meet or exceed the high academic standards set by the University Grants Commission and other academic bodies and the technical requirements for high definition broadcast, the release said.