NPTEL ties up with IBM for new online blockchain course

At one point of time during my PhD days, I was harboring ambitions of being an academic professor. Apart from engaging in cutting edge research which I am passionate about, the role of a professor comes with its responsibility of preparing the next generation to face challenges ahead of them. There is a certain self-actualization in helping others learn what you know, that few other professions can boast of. I have indirectly experienced this having witnessed my mother's passion for teaching which she did all her professional life, through being a teaching assistant during my own student days, and having interacted with many students through guest lectures, internships or informally. Recently, I got the unique opportunity to experience this first hand. I am co-teaching a new online blockchain course with Prof. Sandip Chakraborty from IIT Kharagpur that is now open for registration through NPTEL here. It is a first of its kind in India and is also a first in terms of collaboration between NPTEL and an industry partner (IBM) to jointly offer and co-certify a course. It was announced in the press yesterday, refer here.

NPTEL (National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning) is a joint initiative of the IITs and IISc to offer free, high quality, online web and video courses to the large and growing student population in India. It has grown impressively since its launch more than a decade ago when I was still a student at IIT Madras, both in terms of breadth of courses offered and in the number of students actively learning and obtaining certifications. I was also extremely impressed with the facilities they had for recording lectures, and the helpfulness of their staff in helping a first-timer like me in recording several hours of lectures without much hassle. I must also thank Prof. Sandip Chakraborty for earnestly agreeing to co-teach this course when I first suggested it to him. I believe his teaching and academic experience nicely complemented my industry background working on blockchain for the last nearly three years to shape the content of the course.

With blockchain, I am seeing India adopt technology almost on par with the rest of the world. I strongly believe that the demographic dividend that India enjoys together with a rapid adoption of cutting-edge technology, can really help India leapfrog in terms of economic growth. I hope the blockchain course I am teaching is a small contribution in that direction, if it can help upskill the next generation of students and developers. I had two main objectives for the course, which I'll describe below.

First, while my job at IBM Research gives me the flexibility in engaging in teaching, I know I can't repeat this every semester the way professors do. So, I would like for the course to reach a wide audience including undergraduates, graduates, researchers and developers. NPTEL seemed like the perfect platform for that. We have also tried to ensure that the course has something to offer for every student, starting from the core concepts, having some hands-on sessions that should help developers, covering a breadth of use cases in three industries that could aid startup enthusiasts, and going all the way to advanced topics that can also help students pick topics for their thesis research. This of course, doesn't leave us much room to go into the depths of several topics that perhaps deserve a course of their own, but being a first introductory course on blockchain, we felt we needed to be more broad than deep.

Technological progress is happening at a breathtaking pace today, making it essential for everyone to constantly learn and reinvent themselves. This is all the more true with blockchain. To really equip oneself, it is important to focus on the fundamentals and to understand why things are designed and built a certain way. Once you understand the fundamental principles, it is easier to comprehend its use in different products, services or use cases. This brings me to the second objective of the course, which is to cover the fundamental principles around blockchain technology, so that the student is equipped to follow the pace of progress of the technology over time. Throughout the course, we also provide additional reading material to guide the students to explore further in certain directions, which the student can optionally do based on their interest.

The course is being offered free of cost for a duration of 12 weeks starting the end of July. There is an optional exam that can be taken for a nominal fee paid to NPTEL for conducting the exam. Upon successful completion of the course and exam, the student will be awarded a certificate jointly from NPTEL and IBM (a first for NPTEL with an industry partner). For more details on the topics covered in the course, please visit the course webpage: https://onlinecourses.nptel.ac.in/noc18_cs47/preview

If you are a registered student, I would love to hear your thoughts, expectations and suggestions. Please do drop a note in the comments section!