NPTEL skilling India

Hyderabad: Are you worried about your skills and placements? Then, here is the National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL), that comes your way to help, as it did for Rakesh Ranjan from West Bengal, who got offers from two top multinational companies.

The NPTEL courses are offered completely free of cost to students across India. It is a joint initiative of Indian Institute of Technologies (IITs) and Indian Institute of Science (IISc), with only a nominal fee charged for the certification examination like several of their counterparts.

Rakesh Ranjan said, "After the interviewers saw the NPTEL certifications on my resume, I was asked tough and in-depth questions based on my certification course. Not the basic concepts during the interview."

The NPTEL recognizes active learners on its platform as 'NPTEL Stars' and has started providing free soft skills training to the course toppers and NPTEL stars. This will help them to become well prepared for job interviews.

As part of the soft skills training, NPTEL conducts employability assessment. They include online mock interviews, online interactive sessions and live video sessions. It gives personalized feedback to the students on areas for improvement to enhance employment opportunities.

Narayan Balaso Koli, another student from Maharashtra has been selected in a crore company as a site engineer.

He says that soft skills training from NPTEL helped him face job interviews with a lot of confidence. For the current session, 500 courses are open for enrollment for students as well as working professionals across India. Particularly, it wanted to encourage students from tier two and three cities like Visakhapatnam, Warangal, Khammam, Rajamahendraveram, Karimnagar and other cities in the two Telugu States. Prof Prathap Haridoss, Coordinator, SWAYAM-NPTEL-IIT Madras, said, "NPTEL has been working towards bringing in an industry perspective to its technically rich courses and started partnering with companies through NPTEL Industry-Associate initiative. Companies can partner with NPTEL and use NPTEL courses to train their freshers, cross-skill and up-skill their existing workforce."

Currently, NPTEL has 49 industry partners. Another feature of the NPTEL-SWAYAM is that learners spanning ages from 13 to 86 years can take up NPTEL Certification. An 86-year old Dr Sarada Ramani, a retired Headmistress of a school in Chennai has multiple degrees to her credit. But, has taken up courses on the German language from NPTEL. She said, "I attained a certain degree of expertise over the German language." Now, she is planning to take a course in music in the future.