Massive open online courses to be compulsory at BU

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) will be compulsory for students of Bangalore University (BU) starting the next academic year 2019-20, Vice-Chancellor Venugopal K R said on Friday.

Students will have to complete at least one course by the end of the final year. It will be considered a part of the academics.

Venugopal said: “Students from the engineering stream should complete one course while others should complete two MOOC certifications by the end of their final year. We are implementing this according to the University Grants Commission (UGC) guidelines. Students are free to select their course, which can be interdisciplinary. They are also allowed to take more than one such course.”

MOOC acts as an addition to the traditional course materials by providing nearly two thousand online certification courses.

Autonomy for UVCE

VC Venugopal said that he is on his toes to get an autonomous status for the University Visvesvaraya College of Engineering(UVCE), Bengaluru.

“We have followed all the guidelines in the process and the government is also keen about it. The UVCE can function effectively as an autonomous institution. For now, we have to fill-up all the vacant posts in the college. We intend to finish this process in a year. I hope within two years, the UVCE can be an autonomous institution,” said the vice-chancellor.

Presently, more than 100 posts are vacant in the UVCE, which includes both teaching and non-teaching staff. He added: “We are managing the scarcity of the teaching staff with the guest faculties for now, and the administration work has slowed down due to a lack of manpower in the non-teaching sector.

“The filling up of the vacancies will be done immediately, which speeds up the process of getting autonomous status for the UVCE.”