Union Minister for Human Resource Development, Shri Ramesh Pokhriyal 'Nishank' held a detailed review of the National online education platform SWAYAM and the 32 DTH Television Education Channels SWAYAM PRABHA in New Delhi today.  Secretary, MHRD Shri Amit Khare,  Chairman, UGC, Shri D.P Singh, Chairman AICTE, Shri Anil Sahasrabudhe, Chairman NCERT, Shri Hrushikesh Senpaty, Chairman NIOS, senior official of the ministry, National Coordinators and Professors from IIT Madras, IIT Delhi, IIM Bangalore and IIIT Hyderabad participted in the meeting.

A brief presentation of the progress of these schemes was made. In the lockdown condition there has been a tremendous increase in demand and the usage of SWAYAM Courses and SWAYAM PRABHA videos.

SWAYAM

1902 courses are available currently in SWAYAM, which have been offered to 1.56 cr. students since launch. Currently, over 26 lakh students are taking 574 courses on offer. In all, 1509 courses are available for self-learning. SWAYAM 2.0 also supports launch of Online degree programmes. Mapping of SWAYAM courses to AICTE model curriculum has been done, gaps identified. A similar exercise for non-technical courses is underway by a committee of UGC.

 It was decided that all the 1900 SWAYAM Courses and 60000 SWAYAM PRABHA videos would be translated into ten regional languages and made available to the students so that more benefit can be derived from the same. The more popular content, and for engineering courses taught in first year shall, however, be prioritized for translation.  It was decided to decentralize the task of translation to the National Coordinators, who may be allowed to use all possible services like students, government or private agencies, available technology to undertake translation of content.

The whole project will be started immediately and completed in a time bound manner.  The popular courses and videos would be done first.  In order to complete this exercise  in the shortest possible time a number of educational institutions across the country would be asked to contribute.   Each NC shall submit an action plan to MHRD (E-mail: NMEICT@nmeict.ac.in) by 23^rd April.

An advisory shall be issued to all Directors of IITs to provide all help to the NCs in the task of translation of content, creation of new content in gap areas, and acceptance of credit transfer.

            It was also decided that UGC and AICTE will follow up with Universities and institutions to accept SWAYAM credits. This will enable students to do part of their course though MOOC and part in various colleges.

            Also, to encourage faculty to provide more courses under SWAYAM, appropriate incentives for their career will be provided.

             Further, UGC has been asked to prepare guidelines regarding online and Distance learning guidelines to increase Gross Enrolment Ratio.

SWAYAM Prabha

The SWAYAM PRABHA is a group of 32 DTH channels devoted to telecasting of high-quality educational programmes on 24X7 basis using the GSAT-15 satellite. Every day, there will be new content for at least (4) hours which would be repeated 5 more times in a day, allowing the students to choose the time of their convenience.

The following decisions were taken:

• Possibility of redistribution of channels to match available content, and viewership shall be explored.
• It was also decided to enrich the content in SWAYAM PRABHA by collecting content from who so ever willing to contribute the same under Vidya Daan Programme.  Subject expert committees shall be formed by each NC to approve the content received, before getting it uploaded on SWAYAM Prabha
• The broadcast over DTH will be popularized through all available channels, including radio, social media.
• The video content on SWAYAM Prabha shall be mapped to curriculum, and the academic calendar
• For the translation of content of four IIT-PAL channels, CBSE, NIOS shall provide all assistance to IIT-Delhi. This matter shall be followed up by JS(IEC) in MHRD.

The decisions of the meeting will be reviewed by the Ministry for implementation.

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NB/AKJ/AK