Indian education goes digital, free with Swayam

New Delhi: Launching one of its first kind in India, getting the education online will be at the comfort of your home. The online courses will be delivered through DTH channels, tablets and mobiles. A ‘Made in India’ IT platform – MOOC (Massive Open Online Courses), or Swayam – will host courses taught in classrooms from Class IX to post graduation.

These courses have been developed by over 1,000 expert faculty members from premier institutions like IITs, JNU, Delhi University and Anna University. The courses can be accessed by anyone, anywhere at any time, reports GN.

Students from various recognised institutes in India will be able to earn credits on clearing the online courses. The best part of this online programme is, all courses will be free of cost. The platform of Swayam Prabha will be delivering courses on 32 DTH channel, with its launch by the President Pranab Mukherjee. National Academic Depository (NAD) will take care of facilitating online verification of certificates.

Swayam will enable the students- who are untouched by technology so far- aware of the digital revolution and will bridge the gap between the students. The courses hosted on Swayam will be in four quadrants -video lecture, specially prepared reading material that can be downloaded/printed, self-assessment tests through tests and quizzes and an online discussion forum for clearing doubts.

The scheduled courses include engineering, management, science, humanities, language and mathematics. There are also self-paced courses like critical thinking and contemporary themes on Indian economy.
‘Swayam Prabha’ will be aired on 32 DTH channels for high-quality educational programmes on 24X7 basis using GSAT-15 satellite. There will be new content for at least four hours/day which would be repeated five more times during the day.