On-line learning
There are several ICT initiatives of the MHRD, UGC and its Inter University Centres (IUCs) - Information and Library Network (INFLIBNET) and Consortium for Educational Communication (CEC), in the form of digital platforms which can be accessed by the teachers, students and research scholars in Universities and Colleges for broadening their horizon of learning. These ICT initiatives cover a broad range of subjects and courses and have been prepared by experts and they will provide an excellent learning experience to all
Following is the list of some of the ICT initiatives along with their access links;
SWAYAM is a programme initiated by Government of India and designed to achieve the three cardinal principles of Education Policy viz., access, equity and quality. The objective of this effort is to take the best teaching learning resources to all, including the most disadvantaged. SWAYAM seeks to bridge the digital divide for students who have hitherto remained untouched by the digital revolution and have not been able to join the mainstream of the knowledge economy.
SWAYAM is a programme initiated by Government of India and designed to achieve the three cardinal principles of Education Policy viz., access, equity and quality. The objective of this effort is to take the best teaching learning resources to all, including the most disadvantaged. SWAYAM seeks to bridge the digital divide for students who have hitherto remained untouched by the digital revolution and have not been able to join the mainstream of the knowledge economy.
The acronym "MOOC" stands for Massive Open Online Courses. The word "massive" here means that there is no limit on the number of learners who can enrol in the course. The word "open" means that there are no madatory requirements for the learner to enrol in this course. These courses are fully online and delivered through internet. These courses are highly multimedia enriched interactive online courses which offer a unique opportunity to the learners to learn these courses as per their convenience. The basic philosophy of MOOCs is 3A's i.e., Anytime, Anyone, Anywhere.
e-PGPathshala
e-PG Pathshala is an initiative of the MHRD under its National Mission on Education through ICT (NME-ICT) being executed by the UGC. The content and its quality being the key component of education system, high quality, curriculum-based, interactive e-content in 70 subjects across all disciplines of social sciences, arts, fine arts and humanities, natural & mathematical sciences.
The Consortium for Educational Communication, popularly known as CEC, is one of the Inter University Centres set up by the University Grants Commission of India. It has been established with the goal of addressing the needs of Higher Education through the powerful medium of Television along with appropriate use of emerging Information Communication Technology (ICT).
Realizing the potential and power of television to act as a means of educational knowledge dissemination, UGC started the Countrywide Classroom Programmes in the year 1984. For production of such programmes, Media Centres were set up at 6 Universities. Subsequently CEC emerged in 1993 as a nodal agency to coordinate, guide & facilitate such Educational production at the National level. Today 21 Media Centres work towards achieving this goal under the umbrella of CEC.
The SWAYAM PRABHA is a group of 32 DTH channels devoted to telecasting of high-quality educational programmes on 24X7 basis using the GSAT-15 satellite. Every day, there will be new content for at least (4) hours which would be repeated 5 more times in a day, allowing the students to choose the time of their convenience. The channels are uplinked from BISAG, Gandhinagar. The contents are provided by NPTEL, IITs, UGC, CEC, IGNOU, NCERT and NIOS. The INFLIBNET Centre maintains the web portal.
The Consortium for Educational Communication popularly known as CEC is one of the Inter University Centres set up by the University Grants Commission of India. It has been established with the goal of addressing the needs of Higher Education through the use of powerful medium of Television alongwith the appropriate use of emerging Information Communication Technology (ICT).
The National Digital library of India (NDLI) is a project under Ministry of Human Resource Development, India. The objective is to collect and collate metadata and provide full text index from several national and international digital libraries, as well as other relevant sources. It is a digital repository containing textbooks, articles, videos, audio books, lectures, simulations, fiction and all other kinds of learning media. The NDLI provides free of cost access to many books in English and the Indian languages.
Shodhganga is a digital repository platform of 2,60,000 Indian electronic Theses and Dissertations for research students to deposit their Ph.D. theses and make it available to the entire scholarly community in open access.
Shodhgangotri is a an initiative that compliments "ShodhGanga". While "ShodhGanga" is a repository of full-text theses submitted to universities in India, Shodhgangotri hosts synopsis of research topic submitted to the universities in India by research scholars for registering themselves for the PhD programme. Shodhgangotri is now a vibrant project covering not only Research in Progress but also hosts Major-Minor Research Project /Post Doctorate Fellowship/Emeritus Fellowship etc. (MRPs/PDFs/Fellowships).
It provides current as well as archival access to more than 15,000 core and peer-reviewed journals and a number of bibliographic, citation and factual databases in different discipline from a large number of publishers and aggregators to its member institutions including centrally-funded technical institutions, universities and colleges that are covered under 12(B) and 2(f) Sections of the UGC Act.
VIDWAN is the premier database of profiles of scientists / researchers and other faculty members working at leading academic institutions and other R & D organisation involved in teaching and research in India. It provides important information about expert's background, contact address, experience, scholarly publications, skills and accomplishments, researcher identity, etc. The database developed and maintained by Information and Library Network Centre (INFLIBNET) with financial support from the National Mission on Education through ICT (NME-ICT). The database would be instrumental in selection of panels of experts for various committees, taskforce, established by the Ministries / Govt. establishments for monitoring and evaluation purposes.
The National Academic Depository (NAD) is a digital database of academic awards provided by the Government of India.[1] NAD is an inter-operable system for storage, retrieval, authentication and verification of academic awards. It allows the logging of academic awards. In addition to ensuring the authenticity integrity, and confidentiality of the database, NAD can act as a deterrent to fake and forged paper certificates, reduce administrative efforts, and eliminate the need for institutions to preserve physical records.
Egyankosh is a National Digital Repository of IGNOU to store, index, preserve, distribute and share the digital learning resources developed by the Open and Distance Learning Institutions in the country.
Vidya-mitra is an online learning portal for all the e-content projects developed under the NME-ICT (National Mission on Education through Information and Communication Technology), MHRD. The portal provides facility to search and browse all hosted content wherein a learner can easily access the desired material including audio/video learning material, textual material, multimedia-enriched materials etc. through a single interface. Moreover, features of faceted search, usage statistics, project-wise access, My-Space are incorporated in this portal.
