The National Council for Hotel Management and Catering Technology (NCHMCT) launched a portal for literary and educational material in a bid to boost the availability of online study resources. The National Council Library Network aims to support research activities and those furthering their education or training. NCHMCT is the apex national-level body under the Ministry of Tourism that offers hospitality management courses through over 90 institutions across the country.
Making these educational resources available in several formats like written, audio, and visual makes accessing resources in the hospitality sector much easier, a government official said. The National Council Library Network hope page displays four main links:
- The Physical Section, where users can get information about the NCHMCT library located in Noida, Uttar Pradesh.
- The Digital Library is divided into Standard Teaching Material, Video Modules and Digital Books/Journals.
- The E-books/Journals database, which displays a list of book and journal covers and their title, author, international standard book number (ISBN), publishers and types.
- The Library Rules document, which outlining membership, issue and return, and conduct rules.
According to a press release, the council had begun planning the initiatives and collecting resources for the portal during the pandemic. The post-pandemic boom in the hospitality sector has boosted employability and the availability of opportunities in the tourism and hospitality sector for graduates from the Indian Institutes of Hotel Management (IIHM).
The government has been using portals for easy access to resources across sectors and educational domains. Most platforms are frequently upgraded to incorporate new e-learning tools and advanced analytics. In July, the Department of Posts launched an online educational website to enhance the competencies of about 400,000 rural postal service and departmental employees by providing them access to standardised training content online or in a blended campus mode. The website empowers them to effectively deliver several government-to-citizen (G2C) services for enhanced customer satisfaction. The training videos and quizzes on the portal are available in 12 Indian languages.
In October, the Bharat Skills learning platform introduced a new feature, the Bharat Skills Forum. As OpenGov Asia reported, it enables the sharing of books, notes, videos, question banks, and other relevant skill-related content for learners.
The Ministry described the feature as a digital warehouse for the skilling community. It also allows the sharing of content in various forms like handwritten trainers’ or trainees’ notes, PDFs, scanned copies, or recorded videos in any language.
Bharat Skills is a central digital repository for the trainees and trainers of the ITI ecosystem. It provides easy access to updated curricula, e-books, question banks, mock/practice papers, and learning videos for courses under the Craftsmen Training Scheme (CTS), Craft Instructor Training Scheme (CITS), and the Apprenticeship Training Scheme (ATS).
The platform enables learning outside classrooms. This platform presents unique access to a centralized, scalable, and thriving support ecosystem through its industrial partners for the students and teachers who can now learn the new age (Industrial Revolution 4.0) skills to meet the demands of the industry. The usage of the Bharat Skills learning platform has increased multi-fold from around 90,000 users in March 2020 to more than 4.8 million unique users that accessed the portal and over 17.5 million hits as of October 2022.
