Meta, CBSE expand partnership to enable over 1 crore students to embrace immersive tech

NEW DELHI: Meta (formerly Facebook) on Wednesday said it will expand its partnership with the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) to provide a curriculum on digital safety and online well-being and augmented reality (AR) for over 10 million students and 1 million educators in the country over the next three years.

Additionally, in line with the government’s vision of universalizing education, Meta and CBSE will democratise the high school curriculum by allowing students access to quality educational content online through modules which would be made available on CBSE's website.

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The announcement was made by Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg at Meta’s Fuel for India, 2021. "I'm really excited about this partnership and I think it's a huge opportunity to (invest in) this entrepreneurial spirit and bring some of these tools around the metaverse, and training to the education system here in India,” he said.

The first phase of ‘FB for Education’ initiative was launched in June 2020, aimed at preparing students and teachers for the future of work and creating a safe online environment and learning experience. It witnessed over 500,000 students show interest for digital safety and online well-being and more than 14,000 teachers apply for training in augmented reality.

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The partnership will also aim to empower educators with new age tools and skills needed to nurture the Generation Z and Generation Alpha students into responsible digital citizens.

Aligned to the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, Meta and CBSE will collaborate on content curation and development of curriculum integrating immersive technologies, AR and Virtual Reality (VR) that is relevant for the evolving digital landscape by introducing these as skills subjects for students. By integrating AR experiences into the curriculum, students will be able to collaborate more actively and create using emerging technologies of the future. Immersive education will also enable students with different learning challenges and lack of access to lab resources to learn in an engaging manner.

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CBSE will aim to empower students in the under-served regions of India through its community skill centers making these new age skills available to the youth and help them become creators in the digital economy through equitable access to resources.

Dr Biswajit Saha, Director (Skills Education and Trainings) at CBSE, said the pandemic has impacted lives all around. “The learning process has undergone an unforeseen shift. This drastic change has brought along a wall of challenges in facilitating the process of learning. With the assistance of Meta, we hope to build on our online teaching and curriculum capabilities and make them available to students across the country,” Saha added. This partnership will help equip our teachers with requisite skills to effectively use online tools for student engagement, Saha noted.