![India promotes e-learning across schools and universities](/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/5ac6dbd1b188fd223e7d0246_elearning.jpg)
Recently, the Government of India announced that
the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) has launched multiple schemes
to promote e-learning across students in schools and universities.
The progress of MHRD was shared by the Minister of State
(HRD) Dr Satya Pal Singh in a written reply to a question from the Rajya Sabha
or Council of States.
According to
Minister, the major e-learning initiatives rolled out by MHRD include: (1) the
National Digital Library of India, (2) National Repository of Open Educational
Resources, (3) E-pathshala, (4) the Study Webs of Active Learning for Young
Aspiring Minds, and (5) SWAYAM Prabha.
(1) The
National Digital Library of India (NDL) is a project to develop a framework
of virtual repository to integrate several national and international
digital libraries in one single web-portal. of learning resources with a single-window search facility. There are over
60 types of learning resources and more than 15.3 million digital books
available in over 70 languages through the NDL. The educational materials are
suitable for readers from primary school to post-graduate level.
NDL India provides single window search facilities to act as
a one-stop shop for all digital resources. Information can be personalised
based on education level, choice of language, difficulty level, media of
content and such other factors while other Digital libraries in India may not
include all these choices.
(2) National Repository of Open Educational Resources
(NROER) aims to make digital resources available for teachers and students as
free and open source material. It is a collaborative platform, which
brings together everyone interested in school and teacher education. It enables the participation of the
community in development and sharing of digital resources, as well we
facilitate the adoption and creation of digital resources in different Indian
languages.
NROER is initiated by the Department of School Education and
Literacy of MHRD and managed by
the Central Institute of Educational Technology
(CIET) and National Council of Educational Research and
Training (NCERT).
(3) E-pathshala: E-books of the resources
developed by NCERT, State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT),
State Institutes of Education (SIEs), State boards etc. E-resources and
uploaded on e-pathshala website and disseminated through mobile app.
E-pathshala has been listed on the Unified Mobile Application for New-age Governance (UMANG) of the Indian
Government, which was launched by the Prime Minister in November last year.
(4) The Study Webs of Active Learning for Young Aspiring
Minds (SWAYAM) is an integrated platform for online courses, using
Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and covering schools from 9th to
12th grade to post-graduate Level. At present, about 1000+ massive
open online courses (MOOCs) are listed on SWAYAM, wherein about 3 million students
have enrolled to these courses.
(5) SWAYAM Prabha: SWAYAM Prabha is an
initiative to provide 32 high-quality educational DTH (Direct to Home) channels
across the country on 24X7 basis using the GSAT-15 satellite. Every day, there will be new
content for at least 4 hours which would then be repeated 5 times in a day,
allowing the students to choose the time of their convenience.The SWAYAM Prabha
has curriculum-based course content covering diverse disciplines from school
education (Grade 9-12), higher education
content at undergraduate and post-graduate levels, to courses that can meet the
needs of life-long learners in India.
Over the last three financial
years, the Government of India have invested Rs 247 million, Rs31 million,
Rs1.76 billion and Rs 638 million on NDL, NROER & e-Pathshala, SWAYAM and
SWAYAN Prabha respectively.