Hasn’t education changed a lot in the past few years? Here’s another positive change coming called SWAYAM. ‘Study Webs of Active-Learning for Young Aspiring Minds’ is a programme started by the Govt. of India which aims to provide access to the best quality learning resources across the country.
It provides an integrated platform and portal for online courses, using information and communication technology (ICT). A one-stop web and mobile-based interactive e-content for all courses from High School to University level. It will help provide a high-quality learning experience using multimedia on any time, anywhere basis.
This programme has been designed to achieve 3 cardinal principles of Education Policy (access, equity & quality). From its objective to take the best teaching-learning resources to all, including the most disadvantaged to bridging the digital divide, there are a lot of benefits to the initiative.
Benefits of the programme:
It seeks to provide a state of the art system that allows easy access, monitoring and certification, peer group interaction and discussion forum to clarify doubts and also a hybrid model of delivery that adds to the quality of classroom teaching.
SWAYAM involves the development of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) compliant e-content (video and text) and building a robust IT platform. Apart from this, the Ministry of Human Resources Department has launched 32 educational DTH TV channels named “SWAYAM Prabha” to broadcast content related to education for the masses.
Quality content for the programme:
To ensure that the best quality of content is being delivered, 9 National Coordinators are being appointed like UGC (University Grants Commission) for non-technical post-graduation, NIOS (National Institute of Open Schooling) for school education and so on. National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS) has been assigned to develop the MOOCs for out of school children educational programmes of classes 9th to 12th.
Each National Coordinator has to constitute the SWAYAM Academic Advisory Committee (AAC) consisting of academicians who will assist in making decisions for massive open online courses proposals and on the courses which will be offered on the SWAYAM portal.
The academicians will be from Banaras Hindu University, the University of Kerala, MS University of Baroda, Jamia Millia Islamia Delhi, University of Hyderabad and NIEPA and Rishihood University – the only Private University to be a part of this prestigious committee.
Rishihood University will be represented by Prof. (Dr.) Reva Raina, the Dean – School of Education, as one of its members who is committed to realizing the transformative potential of education as a powerful tool for equity, justice, lifelong learning and sustainability. The university is proud of contributing constructively at the national level in its endeavour to address the needs of the field of education.
The AAC will be identifying course coordinators (CCs) to examine the course proposal and approve them.
Course content for the programme:
These SWAYAM courses can be accessed by anyone, anywhere at any time. All the courses are interactive, prepared by the best teachers in the country and are available, free of cost to any learner. The courses hosted are divided into 4 categories – video lecture, specially prepared & downloadable/printed material, self-assessment tests & quizzes and an online discussion forum for clearing the doubts.
Are you ready for an enriched learning experience with audio-video, multimedia and state-of-the-art pedagogy/technology?
