With the world getting a virtual transformation during the ongoing pandemic, the open digital education has become the need of the hour to assist the students with bridging the gap between time and knowledge. As Covid-19 gripped the world with its microscopic spikes and brought the entire world to the standstill, several sectors of the economy and market took a hit and had to be shut till they could be operated without risking the lives of their foot soldiers on duty.
Lockdowns were imposed all over the world and with that came the need to keep the world running and the virtual world came to the rescue. In India, lockdown started from 21st March 2020 and is expected to last till 14th April 7, 2020, however, given the rapid spread of coronavirus in the community, the decision of uplifting the lockdown remains much anticipated.
One of the major schedule and lifestyle change occurred in the life of students all across the country as the schools and colleges were shut down immediately under the protocol of lockdown to safeguard the future generations. Nevertheless, with the termination of the lockdown still being the topic of debate it is not known for sure when the classes could be resumed and hence many universities have now opted for the digital education as a step forward to help the students stay focused on education.
What is Digital Education?
The term digital education refers to the innovative use of digital tools to deliver learning through teaching using effective modern day technological tools. Learning services could be in the form of face to face, blended or fully online courses. This provided the benefit of accessing the content at a convenient time and location to the learner thus resulting in a more personalized learning experience.
Besides that, this new tool is known to improve the interaction between the educator and learner, and the ability to provide the teachers with better feedback which further helps to enhance the quality of teaching.
Digital initiatives in Higher Education by Indian Government
To ensure the smooth learning process during the lockdown and for students to avail the full benefit of e-learning, Indian HRD ministry has launched various digital initiatives which will allow them to participate in online classes as they would do it physically in colleges, and also utilize the study material to its full potential.
We provide you below with the list of digital platforms curated by various branches of HRD ministry.
Audio-video e-content
SWAYAM
This initiative by the human resource department ministry provides the e-Learning platform for all the courses from class 9 to post graduation. Courses are hosted in four quadrants:
- Video learning
- Reading serial material
- Self assessment test
- Online discussion portal
The learning is provided free of cost but to avail the certification an amount has to be made to the department.
SWAYAMPRABHA
As described by the ministry, The SWAYAMPRABHA is a group OF 32DTH channels devoted to telecasting of high quality education programmed on 24*7 basis using the GSAT-15 satellite. Every day, there will be new content for atleast (4) hours which would be repeated 5more times in a day, allowing the students to choose the time of their convenience. The channels are uplinked from BISAG, Gandhinagar.”
The content includes
- Curriculum based course content for University students
- Curriculum based course content for students from class 9 to 12
- Curriculum based courses that can meet the need of life for Indian citizens
- Competitive exams preparation sets
Access Journals and E-books
National Digital Library
This initiative has led to the excess of free educational material to all, ranging from primary to post graduate level. It is believed to be extremely beneficial to all kinds of learners, students, teachers, lecturers, professors, research scholars etc. The material is available in more than 70 languages and extremely free of cost.
e-PG Pathshala
This is the platform providing e-Learning facilities to the postgraduate courses and it works through the following three verticals
1. e-Adhyayan
This platform provides video content and 700 + eBooks for various post graduate level courses
2. UGC MOOCS
UGC is one of the national level coordinator of SWAYAM and works on producing Postgraduate e-learning courses on SWAYAM.
3. e-Pathya
This is the vertical particularly created for the offline access of the e-learning material for the postgraduate students.
SHODHGANGA
Shodhganga is the platform that allows the Ph.D. scholars in all the streams deposit and publish their theses for access to the upcoming professional in their respective fields. Till now 250000 theses have been published on the esteemed site.
E – SHODHSINDHU
As stated on their respective website, e- Shodhsindhu aims to provide access to more than 15000 journals and a number of bibliographic and factual databases in a wide range of disciplines at a lower cost to educational institutions.
Accelerated hands on learning
1. e-Yantra
e- yantra is the platform founded by the IIT Bombay to train the engineers to solve the practical problems with practical solutions utilizing their engineering skillset.
It has divided its aim by inculcating various branches to look after the respective issues. Some of the initiatives are
- e- yantra robotics competition
- e- yantra ideas competition
- e- yantra lab setup initiative
- e-yantra symposium
- e-yantra resource development canter
FOSSEE (Free and Open Source Software for Education)
This platform promotes the use of FLOSS(FireEye Labs Obfuscated String Solver)tools in academia and research.
Spoken tutorial
The aim of spoken tutorial is to popularize software learning. It provides wide range of subject learning for the utilization by school level to the university students especially addressing the Math and Science as areas of interest. The contents are available in multiple languages thus making it further accessible to our multilingual population.
Track your progress
VIDWAN
VIDWAN consists of database of profiles of research scholars, scientists and faculty members of leading academic institutions. It provides important information about their background, contact details, skills, accomplishments etc. This information is maintained by information and library network center and is very essential for the selection of various task force meant for different evaluation purposes in the country.
Shodh Shuddhi
Under this scheme, plagiarism detecting software, URKUND a Web Based Plagiarism Detection Software system, is provided to the thousand plus registered institutions across the country.