Govt to launch 300 online courses designed by IITs in Hindi, 10 other languages

Bolstering its emphasis to digitise higher education, the Human Resource Development (HRD) Ministry is gearing up to offer about 300 online courses in Hindi and 10 other Indian languages including Oriya, Tamil and Kannada amongst others on its online knowledge platform SWAYAM.

These courses are meant for developing soft skills or supplementing their education. Course seekers will be awarded certificates after passing exams at the end of the course.

The courses are slated to go live in the next three months. It’s being jointly designed and developed by IIT - Delhi, and Chennai. The new courses will cover subjects such as cloud computing, technical English for engineers, management accounting for decision-making, database management system and advertisement and publicity.

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Courses in Hindi and regional languages will help in fueling enrolments. The government aspires to hit 10 million enrolments by the end of the next year. The government is also eyeing to bring in courses and faculty from global institutions.

#SWAYAM is the world's largest #MOOCs program in the making. 18 lakh students registrations in less than 5 months .#EducationRevolution pic.twitter.com/3iW5AzlpSv

— Prakash Javadekar (@PrakashJavdekar) December 23, 2017

“The idea is to target as many people as possible, so while there are 22 states with different languages, we are looking at reaching as many people through somewhat common languages,” an HRD official said to ET.

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SWAYAM is an information technology platform developed by the government to provide high-quality education on various subjects from school (Class IX-XII) to undergraduate and postgraduate level, covering all disciplines.

So far, 76 universities have already approved credit transfer of courses facilitated via Swayam. To that effect, the UGC had already notified the UGC (credit framework for online learning courses through SWAYAM) Regulation 2016 which allows for the transfer of credits earned through these courses into the academic record of the student in the parent institution.