Higher education institutions under digital umbrella soon

Aiming at digitisation of higher education institutions in the State, the Department of Higher Education launched ‘Jnanasangama’, an Information and Communication Technologies enabling programme, here on Friday.

Additional Secretary of Higher Education Department Bharat Lal Meena said, “Through this programme, the department was looking at digital networking, by providing Wi-Fi facility, on all campuses. Under the programme, facilities, such as tele-education, digital libraries, online admissions and online examination evaluation, will be provided in all the higher education institutions.” 

There are 85 different aspects, both academic and administrative, that will be part of the digitisation initiative. According to an official release, at least 15 aspects are related to administration, 16 are pertaining to universities, 7 to colleges and polytechnics and 47 to universities, colleges and polytechnics. 

Instead of depending on private vendors, the software for this is being developed . A pilot test of is being done by National Informatics Centre (NIC).

One of the initiatives is e-attendance for students. Through this, the attendance monitoring will be made transparent, and parents will be alerted too. On the other hand, students will be able to give feedback online about lessons taken by teachers in every class. Further, the Education Management Information System (EMIS), for maintaining online data about all the students in higher education institutions in the State, is underway. The Examination Management System (EMS) and Electronic Answer Script Evaluation (EASE), which look at digitisation of the examination process, will be implemented in educational institutions soon. The EMS and EASE are already being implemented by a few institutions, at present.

Minister for Higher Education T B Jayachandra said that many graduates do not have adequate job skills. Owing to this, they are unable to secure jobs. He called upon the Karnataka State Higher Education Council to bridge this gap and implement a curriculum that would equip students with these skills. The department is looking into this and an MoU has already been signed with National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC).