The University Grants Commission (UGC), in its recent circular, said a total of 43 Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) are available on the information technology platform SWAYAM — Study Webs of Active-Learning for Young Aspiring Minds.
In a letter sent to the all vice-chancellors, UGC secretary Jaspal Sandhu said under the SWAYAM programme of ministry of human resource development (MHRD), the UGC has developed 72 MOOC courses, of which 43 are available on https://swayam.gov.in/.
He asked the officials to publicise the programme by providing a link of e-PG pathshala on the homepage of the university website so that maximum number of students can avail the benefit of these resources.
Apart from these courses on SWAYAM, around 10,000 plus modules have been developed in 57 subjects that are available on the e-PG pathshala website (http://epgp.inflibnet.ac.in) as Open Educational Resource and may be used as a supplementary reading material by the PG students.
According to Sandhu, the MHRD under its National Mission on education through ICT had awarded production of E-content courseware in 77 subjects at post-graduation level to the UGC and it is now available on the ePG pathshala website.
It should be noted that finance minister Arun Jaitley earlier this year on February 1 in his budget speech, spoke about the SWAYAM platform and launching of 350 registered courses free of cost through virtual classroom.
According to the information available on the SWAYAM website, the courses hosted on SWAYAM will be in 4 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 the doubts.
'Steps have been taken to enrich the learning experience by using audio-video and multimedia, and state of the art pedagogy/technology,' read the information.