Mumbai: The Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) have accepted the proposal by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to join their OpenCourseWare community. In this way, MIT students will be able to access classroom content of IITs online.

However, this is not the only method by which IITs are opening their doors to the world. IITs lecture will soon be accessible on Apple's multi-media platform iTunes. Besides, there is a separate channel for IIT courses on You-Tube.

The MIT has first invited the IITs to join its programme in 2007. At that time, IITs refused feeling that their initiatives were too young to join the world of open source learning. But now, after four years, the IITs feel that they have caught up with the other members of the community, which are offering their course material publicly for a long time.

Many other universities, such as Harvard Law School, Yale, Peking, UC Irvine, Notre Dame, Tufts and Utah State have permitted MIT to host links to their courseware. The Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore (IIMB) is already a member of MIT's OpencourseWare.

IITs had taken their own initiative in this regard, the National Programme for Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL), was launched jointly by seven of the old IITs and the Indian Institute of Sciences (IISC). The NPTEL has more than a thousand courses in humanities and technology encompassing all topics from their introduction to the end.

Over 500 Indian Engineering Colleges have been provided with NPTEL content, which can be accessed through college intranet. The number of visitors on its website has shown a significant increase. While it was around 9.37 lakh in 2008, the number stood at 44.39 in December 2011.