Learning: The MOOCs Way

Learning: The MOOCs Way

Online education has been there for a long time now. But since the day it took the shape in the form of MOOCs, it has started gaining acceptance everywhere like never before and is fast engulfing every country in the world. This trend which took birth at MIT, in United States and is already on the way to become mainstream in that part of the world has hit our shores as well and is all set to have direct effect on the lives of those working in higher education sector. MOOC stands for Massive Open Online Courses and are usually aimed at large scale participation, either free or at subsidised costs. Features of MOOC course like Anytime, Anyone, Anywhere has made these courses the preferred choice of learners. Today thousands of MOOC courses designed by top most universities and educational institutes of the world, hosted on the platforms like CourseEra, Edx, Udacity etc are challenging universities in their ability to sustain themselves through traditional classroom system; particularly when government policies favour "staking" of MOOC courses into a Degree.

Sensing the urgency in the matter, Ministry of Human Resource & Development, Government of India launched an indigenous platform SWAYAM to host MOOC courses designed and developed within the country. SWAYAM is an acronym for Study Webs of Active learning for Young Aspiring Minds. As per MHRD report published in December, 2018; One thousand six hundred MOOC courses developed by different National Coordinators have already been hosted on SWAYAM platform, 90 universities in the country have already agreed to transfer the credits for the course done through SWAYAM, more than 39 Lakh have enrolled themselves in different courses and 60000 students have completed the course on SWAYAM.

 As per UGC Credit Transfer Framework for online learning through SWAYAM- 2016, a student pursuing a programme in a university can earn up to 20% credits through MOOC courses hosted on SWAYAM, thereby reserving 80% weightage to the traditional student-teacher classroom interaction and no university shall refuse any student for credit mobility for the course earned through SWAYAM. UGC has also come up with " Annual Refresher Programme in Teaching" (ARPIT), through which Refresher courses are offered through a MOOC course hosted on SWAYAM. UGC has decided to treat MOOC  course under ARPIT program as equivalent to one refresher course. Now a faculty member need not to travel a long distances to undergo a refresher program if he finds one suitable to him on ARPIT. In addition to the financial support to the faculty members who are involved in design and development of MOOC courses, an attractive score in API has also been approved. Needless to mention that universities encouraging MOOC courses earn more points in NIRF rankings. 

To get benefited from this initiative of MHRD, a university can contribute in two ways firstly as a Parent Institute and secondly as a Host Institute. As a Parent institute, University has to encourage  students to register for the free courses hosted on SWAYAM, particularly those courses for which there is a dearth of faculty. The SWAYAM platform is accompanied by a mobile application for easier access to the courses. At the end of the course, examinations are conducted by National Testing Agency (NTA) either online or through pen & paper mode. As a Host institute, faculty members need to come forward and take an initiative to design and develop a quality  MOOC course on varied subjects  in a four quadrant format which can be hosted on SWAYAM platform. Courses hosted on SWAYAM are not real time which makes it suitable for this place where internet connectivity is not guaranteed all the time. 

With a futuristic schemes in higher education like National Academic Credit Bank (NACB), which UGC envisions to rollout by 2021, a student will be will able to join in one university , pursue the courses in different universities and earn a degree from another university. In this scenario credits earned through MOOC courses hosted on SWAYAM become more meaningful and have the highest  potential to integrate with the scheme.