India will make an entry in a new world this week in higher education with the roll out of numerous courses. These courses will be provided via tablets, DTH channels, and mobiles. These courses have been designed by more than 1,000 expert faculty staffs from premier organizations such as JNU, IITs, Anna University, and Delhi University.
Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC), or Swayam, a “Made in India” IT platform, will host courses given in classrooms from post graduation to Class IX, which can be authorized anywhere, by anyone, at any time. All these courses are available free of cost and interactive. Students from different recognized institutes in the country will receive credits on passing these online courses. This move will have a boosting effect on the online education market in India.
Pranab Mukherjee, the President of India, will roll out Swayam Prabha as well as Swayam, the platform to deliver the courses of 32 DTH channels, and National Academic Depository (NAD) that will smooth the progress of verification of online certificates. Swayam goals at picking the best resources related to teaching-learning to all, link the digital divide for candidates who have up till now remained unaware of the digital revolution and have been unable to connect the mainstream of knowledge.
The courses provided on Swayam will be in 4 parts—personally prepared reading stuff that can be printed/downloaded, video lecture, an online discussion medium for clearing doubts, and self-assessment tests via quizzes and tests.
The planned courses comprise management, engineering, humanities, science, mathematics, and language. There are also self-rated courses such as contemporary themes and critical thinking on Indian economy.
“Swayam Prabha” is visualized as a bunch of 32 DTH channels dedicated to telecasting high quality educational programs on daily basis utilizing GSAT-15 satellite. Each day, there will be fresh content for minimum 4 hours, which will be telecasted again 5 more times in a day.
Well, the launch of Swayam is sure to boost the online education system as well as online education market in India. For now, sources has confirmed that once the service will go live, the government will add more courses to it.
