Indian Institute of Technology Madras has taken a unique initiative to make its high-quality courses in Computer Science available to everyone. The Faculty from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering have created a portal containing the core courses that can be accessed by educational institutions, students and anyone else interested.

“The recordings of live lectures for CSE core courses at the undergraduate level and the graduate level, by the faculty of the Department, are expected to be helpful to the students in Engineering Colleges to learn the underlying concepts and principles of the subjects of these courses in the right manner,” said Prof. C. Chandra Sekhar, Head, Department of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE), IIT Madras.

The core Computer Science courses that are available on the portal are programming, Data Structures, Computer Organisation and Algorithms. One can find it here.

This initiative is also a major step towards realising the vision of Prof. V. Kamakoti, Director, IIT Madras, who is keen to make high-quality education accessible to rural India.

Each course has YouTube recordings of live lectures taught to the students at IIT Madras during the pandemic.

Further, Prof. C. Chandra Sekhar said, “It will also be beneficial to the teachers in Engineering Colleges to get to know how to effectively teach the important and fundamental subjects in Computer Science and Engineering and how to equip the students with the problem-solving skills. It is hoped that the portal will be used to improve the quality of teaching and learning the CSE core subjects in Engineering Colleges in India.”

Computer Science is one of the most sought-after engineering disciplines in India, especially in the IITs, and is of high interest to the students. Although a large proportion of students apply for this stream in IITs, there are only a limited number of seats available in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering.

The Department is also planning to engage senior students to conduct live tutorial sessions where they will also clarify the doubts of students.

The department plans to create randomised quizzes in the future for better evaluation. All the elements together will provide a comprehensive package for the students to learn the course.