Higher education dept gets a mega digital boost

For the first time ever, the higher education department is seeing a massive information and communication technology overhaul. The officials are working on an 86-point plan to bring in digitisation in higher education institutions. While office automation is one aspect of it, there are a host of student-centric initiatives. The brain behind this programme is Bharath Lal Meena, principal secretary of the department. 

Apart from making the entire pre-exam and post-exam process online, the department will introduce online application and admission process for undergraduate and postgraduate courses. Digital attendance registration, inter-university information highway and online affiliation process are on the anvil. While some of these are partially implemented this year, the department is looking at full-scale implementation from next academic year.

Meena told Deccan Herald that he began this programme as soon as he took charge as principal secretary six months ago. 

The department will make the entire admission process online, including the application process. The students do not have to go from college to college buying applications. They can apply once online and seats will be allotted based on merit, like CET admissions, Meena said. The department has tried this out this year for polytechnic courses and in some government degree colleges. This will be implemented across all government, aided and unaided institutions for UG and PG courses.

Not every student can secure admission in top colleges. However, on this account alone, students should not miss out on quality education. 

This is the principle with which e-content sharing is being implemented. To begin with, 22 top colleges have been selected to record their lectures and share teaching aids with other institutions. The content shared by colleges is available on a central server that can be accessed by other colleges and students. 

The Examination Management System (EMS) and Electronic Answer Script Evaluation System (EASE) will make the entire exam process online beginning from hall tickets to marks card generation. Colleges will not have to depend on private organisations for software. The department has entrusted this responsibility to the National Informatics Centre.

“ VTU has partly implemented this system already. Tumkur University is likely to introduce it from next semester and KSOU by this October. The database will be saved in the e-governance department. The software will be bilingual,” said Bhagyavana S Mudigoudra,  Higher Education Department e-governance official. 

The electronic class matrix will check attendance fraud across colleges. In the class, instead of registering attendance in a book, the lecturer will do it electronically on a mobile phone. This will be stored in the student database. Alerts will be sent to parents.