ROLE OF ICT IN HIGHER EDUCATION
ICT can be used for planning classroom activities, delivering content to students, and evaluating their learning. Slides, videos, online live streams, podcast, radio streams, etc., can be used to garner attention and interest of students while addressing them. Educational content in the form of slides, videos, live sessions, etc., can be broadcasted online with the use of ICT. Students can access the learning material anywhere and anytime depending upon their routine. This helps in lifelong learning. Use of ICT helps in removing the geographical barriers in teaching. As with the help of online videos and live streaming, experts sitting in their office can teach students in remote areas as well. It can be used for creating three-dimensional models of real objects. These are helpful when the real object cannot be brought to the classroom especially when it is too small or too big, too dangerous, or too expensive. ICT can also be used while enrolling students in courses with online admission forms, online entrance test, and uploading results and counselling schedules online. ICT can also be used for placements and recruitment with online registration, online test, and updating results online. This will save time and money. It facilitates the classroom activities and interactions. ICT plays significant role in research work as well. It can be used for collecting, processing, storing, and interpreting data. Also, it will help in communicating the research findings. Students can access e-books, e-libraries, and other resources online. This saves money as many of such resources are free of cost or available at minimal cost. ICT can be used for maintaining the record of students’ performance and sharing it with their parents. It enhances the efficiency and quality of learning and teaching. It also leads to skill development, and improves criti¬cal thinking and decision-making ability. If used carefully, ICT can help in removing barriers and other problems which adversely affect teaching. According to UNESCO, ‘ICT now permeates the education environments and underpins the very success of 21st century education. ICT also adds value to the process of learning and to the organization and management of learning institutions’.
Digital initiatives in higher education
MHRD is responsible for the overall development of the basic infrastructure of Higher Education sector, both in terms of policy and planning. The main objective of the Ministry is to Formulating the National Policy on Education and to ensure that it is implemented in letter and spirit. It is responsible for Planned development, including expanding access and improving quality of the educational institutions throughout the country, including in regions where people do not have easy access to education. Under a planned development process, MHRD looks after expansion of access and qualitative improvement in the Higher Education, through world class universities, colleges and other institutions through various Digital Initiatives in Higher Education system of India. The technology of online education and all the digital initiatives have the possibility to revolutionize higher education scenario in the near future.
Following are Digital Initiatives in Higher Education1
1. SWAYAM SWAYAM (Study Webs of Active–Learning for Young Aspiring Minds)
It is a programme initiated by Government of India and designed to achieve the three cardinal principles of Education Policy viz., access, equity and quality. SWAYAM seeks to bridge the digital divide for students who have hitherto remained untouched by the digital revolution and have not been able to join the mainstream of the knowledge economy. This is done through an indigenous developed IT platform that facilitates hosting of all the courses taught in classrooms to be accessed by anyone, anywhere at any time. All the courses are interactive, prepared by the best teachers in the country and are available, free of cost to the residents in India.
2. 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. The contents are provided by NPTEL, IITs, UGC, CEC, IGNOU, NCERT and NIOS. The INFLIBNET Centre maintains the web portal. Curriculum based course contents covering diverse disciplines such as arts, science, commerce, performing arts, social sciences and humanities subjects, engineering, technology, law, medicine, agriculture etc. in higher education is available.
3. National Academic Depository
National Academic Depository (NAD) is born out of an initiative to provide an online store house of all academic awards. National Academic Depository (NAD) is a 24X7 online store house of all academic awards viz.certificates, diplomas, degrees, mark-sheets etc. duly digitised and lodged by academic institutions / boards / eligibility assessment bodies. NAD not only ensures easy access to and retrieval of an academic award but also validates and guarantees its authenticity and safe storage. National Academic Depository comprises of two interoperable digital depositories viz. CDSL Ventures Limited (CVL) and NSDL Database Management Limited (NDML). These digital depositories have ensured hardware, network facilities and software of prescribed quality for smooth and secured operationalisation of NAD.
4. National Digital Library of India
The Library was launched in pilot form in May 2016. The Library was dedicated to the nation on June 19, 2018 by union human resource minister Prakash Javadekar. It is a digital repository containing textbooks, articles, videos, audio books, lectures, simulations, fiction and all other kinds of learning media. The NDLI provides free of cost access to many books in English and the Indian languages.
5. e-Shodh Sindhu
More than 15,000 international electronic journals and e-books are made available to all the higher educational institutions through the e shodh Sindhu initiative. This allows access to be best education resources in the world using digital mode. The INFLIBNET, Gandhinagar, Gujarat is implementing the Scheme.
6. E-Yantra
An MHRD initiative under NMEICT Programme, named “e-Yantra” is implemented to incorporate Robotics into engineering education with the objective of engaging students through exciting hands-on application of mathematics, computer science, and engineering principles, norms has been very successfully demonstrated during phase-I of the project. Presently, e-Yantra has been implemented in 100 colleges. eYantra is creating skills by setting up lab infrastructure for project based learning and training teachers in these 100 engineering colleges. All the projects and code are available on the e-Yantra web-site www.eyantra.org as open source content.
7. Virtual Labs
Virtual Labs project is an initiative of Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD), Government of India under the aegis of National Mission on Education through Information and Communication Technology (NMEICT). This project is a consortium activity of twelve participating institutes and IIT Delhi is coordinating institute. It is a paradigm shift in ICT-based education. Under Virtual Labs project, over 100 Virtual Labs consisting of approximately 700+ web-enabled experiments were designed for remote-operation and viewing. Virtual Labs do not require any additional infrastructural setup for conducting experiments at user premises. The simulations-based experiments can be accesses remotely via internet.
8. Vidya-mitra
Vidya-mitra is an online learning portal for all the e-content projects developed under the NME-ICT (National Mission on Education through Information and Communication Technology), MHRD. The portal provides facility to search and browse all hosted content wherein a learner can easily access the desired material including audio/video learning material, textual material, multimedia-enriched materials etc. through a single interface. Moreover, features of faceted search, usage statistics, project-wise access, My-Space are incorporated in this portal.
9. FOSSEE (The Free an Open Source Software for Education)
The FOSSEE project is part of the National Mission on Education through Information and Communication Technology (ICT), Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD), Government of India. It provides instructional material such as spoken tutorials, documentation such as textbook companions, awareness programmes such as conferences, training workshops and Internships. Textbook Companion (TBC) is a collection of code for solved examples of standard textbooks. About 2,000 college students and teachers have participated in this activity & close to 1,000 TBCs have been created in Scilab and Python alone. FOSSEE has made all the TBCs open source and has made them available for free download. Scilab and Python TBCs are also on the cloud, so that one needs only a browser to access/execute the codes of TBC.
10. E-Kalpa
Another MHRD/ NMEICT initiative named “e-Kalpa” creating Digital-Learning Environment for Design in India has successfully demonstrated the achievement of the following project objectives, on completion of its phase-I:
i. Digital online content for learning Design with e-Learning programs on Design
ii. Digital Design Resource Database including the craft sector
iii. Social networking for Higher Learning with collaborative Learning Space for Design
iv. Design inputs for products of National Mission in Education through ICT As on December 2015, the content of e-Kalpa website named “D’source” includes 160 Courses on Design Learning in different domains, more than 400 Resources in the form of fine examples of Design and crafts, 110 Case studies of Design Projects undertaken by professionals and design students, 50 Video lectures and presentations by subjects experts and 600 examples of a visual Gallery that has documented works of the rich tradition of art and design seen across different regions of India.
11. e-Vidwan
VIDWAN is the premier database of profiles of scientists / researchers and other faculty members working at leading academic institutions and other R & D organisation involved in teaching and research in India. It provides important information about expert’s background, contact address, experience, scholarly publications, skills and accomplishments, researcher identity, etc. The database developed and maintained by Information and Library Network Centre (INFLIBNET) with financial support from the National Mission on Education through ICT (NME-ICT).
Objectives
i. Quickly and conveniently provide information about expert to peers, prospective collaborators, funding agencies policy makers and research scholar in the country.
ii. Identify peer reviewers for articles and research proposal.
iii. Discover prospective collaborators for on-going research projects.
iv. Establish communication directly with the experts who possess the expertise needed by users.
v. To create information exchanges and networking opportunities among scientists.
12. Campus Connectivity
Establishment of 1 GBPS Connectivity to universities and 20 512 Kbps broadband connectivity to colleges has been provisioned under NMEICT. A total of 600 Universities have been connected through 1 Gbps Optical Fibre; 22026 Colleges have so far been connected with 10 Mbps bandwidth. On the lines of ‘Digital India’ initiative of the PMO, the MHRD has now decided that the campuses of Universities, (having 1 Gbps bandwidth) shall be made WiFi enabled campus. Already all the IITs, IIMs, and NITs have established WiFi campuses. The process of laying the optical fibre and provision of the WiFi in Central Universities is currently underway.
13. Spoken Tutorial
Spoken Tutorial is a multi-award winning educational content portal. Here one can learn various Free and Open Source Software all by oneself. Their self-paced, multi-lingual courses ensure that anybody with a computer and a desire for learning, can learn from any place, at any time and in a language of their choice. End-of-Course online tests and certificates are available for those who wish to test their expertise in a particular software. These certificates give an edge to students during placement by increasing their employability potential. The Spoken Tutorial project is the initiative of the ‘Talk to a Teacher’ activity of the National Mission on Education through Information and Communication Technology (ICT), launched by the Ministry of Human Resources and Development, Government of India.
