JOIN USClear courses for Swayam: Centre tells universities
The Centre has operationalised its Massive Open Online Courses (Moocs) platform to conduct 263 undergraduate and postgraduate courses in engineering and management through virtual classrooms from this month.
It has notified a list of courses to be conducted through Swayam, the Moocs platform, seeking universities and autonomous colleges to immediately select and approve courses from the list they would allow their students to pursue.
“You are requested to finalise the courses which will be permitted by your university/autonomous college for registration by your students for taking the courses online under Moocs,” Anil D Sahasrabudhe, chairman of the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), stated in a letter to all vice-chancellors and heads of other higher educational institutions.
AICTE is the nodal agency for running the Moocs platform. Courses to be offered to the first batch of students under Moocs were recently approved by the human resource development ministry in consultation with AICTE and the University Grants Commission (UGC).
Students can complete 20% of their courses through the virtual classrooms. At the end of each semester, they will have to take proctored examinations in order to move to the next level, according to regulations for Moocs, notified by UGC last year.
The credit earned by the student will be transferred to their parent university or the autonomous college. Students will get their degrees from their parent universities on the successful completion of their programme. However, their certificates will reflect the names of the institutes which provided them online tutorials.
Virtual classes will be held by the faculty from various Indian Institutes of Technology, Indian Institute of Science, Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research, Indian Institutes of Management and other higher educational institutions of repute.
University of Mysore is also in the list of institutions set to participate in Swayam.
DH News Service