IIT Kanpur has developed an Open-source, Freeware E-learning Platform that is available to all for enhancing existing learning environments in their institutions through their campus networks.
A pamphlet on this is available at http://home.iitk.ac.in/~ynsingh/tool/pamphlet.pdf
IIT Kanpur is using this tool since January 2003. All the students and instructors (3183 users) have access to nearly 373 courses through this. Faculty uses this facility to post the lecture notes, handouts, and reference material (in electronic format) on the Intranet for supporting the classroom teaching. Students find this very useful. They can also have discussion groups. This leads to lot of informal learning as students get time to think over what others have posted and discussion is spread over a large duration. Also, the students need not be present at one location at one point of time for discussion. Thus the spatial and temporal limitations are alleviated. Another advantage is lot of electronic content for courses is generated which gets streamlined over the period. This becomes a good resource material for the students and for instructors.
In a letter to all vice chancellors in the country advising them to use this free Elearning platform in their universities and promote its use in affiliated colleges to enhance teaching learning processes in the higher education system in the country.
The tool for virtual classroom is called "Brihaspati" and it is open source software that could be used by any university. This is a very user-friendly open source framework and could be effectively used to build e-education application. One can also modify it and use it in domains like Human Resource Development and e-Governance.
This tool is listed on sourceforge.net. See url http://brihaspati.sourceforge.net/and you could also visit http://202.141.40.216:8080/brihaspati/servlet/brihaspati/ for getting installation instructions.
You could contact - Dr. Yatindra Nath Singh, Coordinator ETRF (Educational Technology Research Group), EE/ACES/IIT Kanpur - 208016.
Phone : +91-512-259-7944, Fax :+91-512-2590063 for more details.
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