NEW DELHI : How about enrolling for the online professional courses offered by Harvard University, MIT and many other American universities, with a stamp of the Government of India for the official recognition to such courses?
The Human Resources Development Ministry is actively engaged in finalising the arrangement and sign an MoU (memorandum of understanding) next month to launch in partnership the SWAYAM (Study Webs of Active Learning for Young Aspiring Minds).
The idea is that anybody at any age, and particularly those in the jobs who can not study full time, can undertake the customised courses through SWAYAM to acquire the job-focused qualifications, a ministry source said. She said SWAYAM will be a web portal offering “Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) on all kinds of subjects that the students can access at a nominal fee. Under the cooperation agreement, the American universities will provide video lectures to the SWAYAM portal to be based in India while US universities will be invited to offer academic programmes on the platform.
The ministry is also working with the National Science Foundation (NSF), the federal agency of the US that promotes science and research, to initiate a programme called Global Initiative of Academic Networks (GIAN). Under this scheme, faculty members from the American institutions would spend part of their time teaching in academic and research institutions across India.
While the Americans are pioneers in offering the online courses for the past few years, such courses are not entirely a novelty in India as IIT Madras has already started two specialised online courses while IIT Kanpur has launched one. The courses are now being offered under the National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL) portal, a joint online initiative of the IITs and the IISc.
The NPTEL, which has been providing e-learning materials on MTech and BTech courses for the past few years, started these three additional short-term courses this year. However, once the SWAYAM is launched, it will offer all the specialised online courses while the NPTEL may continue its ongoing activities like offering e-materials for BTech and MTech courses.
The online courses started on the NPTEL by IIT Madras this year are “Programming, Data Structure and Algorithms” and “Basic Electrical Circuits.”
