OpenStudy to Forge Partnership With NPTEL

The Hindu (India) (05/30/11) T. Ramachandran

OpenStudy, a Web-based platform that seeks to become a kind of Facebook for learning, has partnered with the National Program on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL).  OpenStudy brings together people who have questions with those who may have answers.  Learners, including those who are not part of a formal education system, can access OpenStudy directly or through Facebook, join groups of their choice, and pose questions as well as provide answers to the inquiries of other users.  Following the Wiki principle, answers are crowdsourced, meaning the next user can correct wrong answers, which are also rated by users in the form of a Good Answer rating.  The Indian Institutes of Technology and the Indian Institute of Science have implemented NPTEL, with the support of the Ministry of Human Resource Development, to offer a range of Web and video courses in engineering, science, humanities, and social sciences.  ”We are waiting to have a technical discussion to take the next step of integration,” says OpenStudy co-founder Preetha Ram.  The U.S. National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and the Georgia Research Alliance have provided funding for OpenStudy.
http://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/technology/article2059983.ece