SWAYAM or Study Webs of Active –Learning for Young Aspiring Minds

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TOPIC: General Studies 2

• Government policies and interventions for development in various sectors and issues arising out of their design and implementation.
• Issues relating to development and management of Social Sector/Services relating to Health, Education, Human Resources

In News: The country faces a huge demand-and-supply mismatch when it comes to higher education. With the advent of technology, e-learning is rapidly gaining importance and momentum. With the government aiming at digitising India with its ‘Digital India’ initiative, educational institutes are also working in tandem to help fulfil the goal. Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) are fast gaining popularity among students and working professionals as they help them study at their convenience and time.

Programme of: Ministry of Human Resource Development

Aim: 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

Objective: Take high quality education (technology-enabled learning) to the doorstep of everyone including the most disadvantaged

Designed to achieve the three cardinal principles of Education Policy viz.

• Access
• Equity
• Quality

What is SWAYAM: SWAYAM is an instrument for self-actualisation providing opportunities for a life-long learning

On SWAYAM Portal: Professors and faculties of centrally funded institutions like IITs, IIMs, central universities will offer online courses to citizens of India

SWAYAM platform: Indigenously developed by Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) and All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) with the help of Microsoft

SWAYAM is trying to achieve a scenario in which –

• Investments and resources should be directed towards development of content in various subjects and languages, repository of professional moderators, qualification framework, assessment and certification with active private sector participation.
• Faculty from across colleges in the country could upload content for students living in geographically disadvantaged regions
• To promote critical thinking, colleges or universities could think of choice based courses where students of one discipline could opt for courses in other disciplines
• Access to SWAYAM to be widened by linkage with DTH channels, dedicated to education

Features:

Cost: Swayam courses are available free of cost to the learners.

Certification: Students wanting Swayam certifications need to register. They would be offered a certificate on successful completion of the course and charged a little fee.

Transferable marks/grades: At the end of each course, students would also be assessed through proctored examination and the marks/grades secured in this exam could be transferred to the academic record of the students. For this, the UGC has issued UGC (Credit Framework for online learning courses through Swayam) Regulation 2016, advising the universities to identify courses where credits can be transferred on to the academic record of the students for courses done on Swayam

Way Forward

Address Poor learning outcome: The learning progress and understanding of concepts are hardly assessed in terms of real world applications and synthesizing the learning.

Structured assessment and personalised feedback needs to be incorporated.

Facilitation of mandatory peer-to-peer interaction as it is inevitable to attain professional, interpersonal, negotiation and leadership skills

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