NPTEL, the National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning, is a project funded by the Indian Ministry of Education and initiated by IITs and IISc. NPTEL provides E-learning through online Web and Video courses in Engineering, Science and Humanities streams.

I recently had to enrol in an NPTEL course and was surprised by the poor user experience on their website. The navigation is unintuitive, the UI is non-responsive, and the authentication system is outright broken. The frustrating and outdated system is not a standard to be expected from a government funded, cutting-edge educational platform.

Enrolling in an NPTEL Course: A Frustrating Experience

I started at their Courses page to find my desired course, which I found. However, there was no clear “Enroll” button; only a “Log in” option and ‘Swayam Certificate’ option were visible. Assuming I needed to log in first, I clicked “Log in” and was directed to the Login page, which displayed the message: “Please make sure that you login using the same email id you had used while enrolling to the course.”

At this point, I hadn’t created an account yet, so I attempted to sign up. After filling in the required fields, I clicked “Create,” only to be redirected and be met with a bizarre error: “Your email id doesn’t match our records!” Below it was a “Logout” button which was confusing, since the sign up attempt seemed to have failed. Clicking it redirected me again, this time to an “Unauthorized“ error page. Now, I was stuck - unable to sign up, log in, log out or even try again.

Since I had an understanding of how sessions work, I cleared my browser cookies and tried logging in with the same id and password, thinking my account might have been created. But once again, I got the same “email id doesn’t match” error. I repeated this process multiple times with different email IDs and passwords on different days, but the issue persisted.

The Unexpected SWAYAM Detour

After multiple failed attempts, I checked NPTEL’s FAQ page. Under FAQ -> Online Courses -> “How do I enroll/register for an NPTEL online course?”, I found that I was supposed to enroll through the SWAYAM website. This was not indicated on the NPTEL course page, except for the button labelled ‘Swayam Certificate’ which new users might not understand such as myself, leading to confusion.

On SWAYAM, I attempted to sign up using the same ids I tried on NPTEL, only to receive yet another error: “A user with the specified ID already exists. Please choose a different one.” This suggests:

  • The NPTEL and SWAYAM websites share the same database.
  • My failed account creation on NPTEL still stored my credentials on this database.

This raises issues:

  • Why does NPTEL’s login system exist if students are supposed to enroll via SWAYAM?
  • Is the NPTEL login system abandoned/archived with lingering session issues?
  • The course pages on NPTEL should have an explicit button for enrolling as new users will not realize that the ‘Swayam Certificate’ button is where they should click on.

After using a new username, I was finally able to register on SWAYAM and enroll in my course.

A Non-Responsive UI

The UI on NPTEL for desktop is functional. However, on mobile it is not responsive which is through which most students access online content from.

  • Up to 90% of Indian households do not own a computer (desktop PC, laptop etc. ) whereas over 95% of households own a mobile phone (CAMS-mospi).
  • Up to ~9% of Higher Education Institutions (considering all streams) in India lack a ‘computer center’ (AISHE-s2waas).
  • Up to ~ 80% of web traffic in India comes from mobile devices (statcounter).

Below are some screenshots of the NPTEL website on mobile screen sizes with the issues highlighted (click on the images to view them in full size with the issues described):

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The Exam Form and Spammy Email

To receive a certificate for the course, students must pay for and take an exam. The registration form redundantly asks for details already provided when enrolling in a course. Worse, when uploading a photo, signature, and ID proof, the system enforces an arbitrary minimum file size of 50KB. This makes no sense:

  • If it’s about quality, check the image dimensions instead.
  • If it’s about security, use proper validation rather than enforcing a file size range.

This may lead to students having to unnecessarily increase file size by adding padding or noise.

Exam Registration Form

Exam Registration Form

After partially filling the form but not submitting it or completing registration for the exam, I received multiple reminder emails to complete the payment. Worse, there was no option to unsubscribe.

Conclusion: NPTEL Needs a UI / UX Fixing

NPTEL is a good initiative, but its platform especially for new users is disappointing. A government-backed educational platform should not have such usability flaws. At the very least, they should:

  • Remove or properly integrate the NPTEL login system by fixing session handling and database inconsistencies.
  • Clearly instruct students to use SWAYAM for enrollment on every course page by adding an explicit “Enroll” button.
  • Improve mobile responsiveness.
  • Stop sending spammy emails or provide an option to unsubscribe.

Until these issues are resolved, students will continue to struggle with a platform that is supposed to make learning accessible.