Lockdown 2.0: SWAYAM and SWAYAM Prabha saw a tremendous increase in demand

NEW DELHI: In a review held by Ramesh Pokhriyal, union minister for Human Resource and Development, the progress of SWAYAM courses and SWAYAM Prabha videos were discussed. Both of these online educational platforms have enormously been in demand in recent times of lockdown across the country.

SWAYAM offers 1,902 courses and around 26,00,000 students have taken up 574 courses on offer. These courses help the students in studying with all the required resources in online mode. SWAYAM 2.0 also supports the launch of online degree programmes.

In a review meeting, it was decided that the 1,900 SWAYAM courses and 60,000 SWAYAM Prabha videos will be translated into 10 regional languages. This decision has been made so that more students can take advantage of the online educational programme by the Ministry of Human Resource Development.

As per the Press Information Bureau: ‘“To encourage faculty to provide more courses under SWAYAM, appropriate incentives for their career will be provided.”

In a review meeting, it has been decided that the University Grants Commission will prepare online and distance learning guidelines in order to increase the Gross Enrolment Ratio.

Secretary, MHRD Amit Khare, chairman, UGC, D.P Singh, chairman All India Council for Technical Education, Anil Sahasrabudhe, chairman National Council of Educational Research and Training, Hrushikesh Senpaty, chairman National Institute of Open Schooling, a senior official of the ministry, national coordinators and professors from IIT Madras, IIT Delhi, IIM Bangalore and IIIT Hyderabad were a part of this meeting.

SWAYAM PRABHA, on the other hand, a group of 32 DTH channels telecast high-quality educational programmes 24*7. These programmes are telecasted for four hours and are repeated five times a day for the convenience of the students.

The following decisions were taken into consideration:

• Redistribution of channels to match available content and viewership will be explored.

• It is also decided to enhance the content in SWAYAM PRABHA by incorporating it from the ones who are willing to contribute under Vidya Daan Programme. Further, it is decided that the subject expert committees will be formed by each NC to approve the received content before uploading it on SWAYAM Prabha

• The DTH broadcast to be popularized via all available channels. This will also be done through radio and social media.

• All the content of SWAYAM Prabha videos will be mapped to the curriculum and the academic calendar.

• CBSE and NIOS are supposed to provide all the assistance to IIT-Delhi, for the translation of IIT-PAL channels.