Genesis
The Indian higher education has grown exponentially over the last several years. The number of students enrolled in the HE system is 40 million as of now. The current Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER ratio of the students enrolled in the age group of 18-23 years to the population in the same age group) is 24.6%, while we aim to increase it to 30% by 2020 (developed countries have a GER of 60 to 70 %.). In addition, India has a clear demographic advantage with about 50 percent of the Indian population below the age of 25 years. To provide access to quality higher education to such a mammoth young population, even at the remotest corners of the country, India needs to take some innovative steps to increase enrolment apart from increasing the number of HEIs.
With Information, Communication and technology (ICT) making inroads in the education sector worldwide, India is also trying to leverage technology, to a large extent, to improve the access to quality Higher Education. The GOI launched the ambitious National Mission on Education through ICT (NMEICT) in 2009, for employing technology to provide connectivity, along with provision for multiple access devices, to institutions and learners; and for content generation.
Under the Mission, more than 810 online courses in various disciplines of engineering and science have been developed. Over 126 Virtual Labs in nine Engineering & Science disciplines, comprising more than 770 experiments and 1500 Spoken Tutorials are available on line. Under the NMEICT scheme, a total of 403 Universities have been connected through 1 Gbps Optical Fiber; 22026 Colleges have so far been connected with 10 Mbps bandwidth. Also access is being provided to more than 3,100 e-journals and 80,000 e-books to all degree colleges except colleges imparting education in engineering, management, medical, nursing, pharmacy and dentistry, under the NLIST programme.
In 2011, UGC was entrusted with the responsibility of developing e-content in 77 subjects at postgraduate level to create high quality, curriculum-based, interactive content in different subjects across disciplines of social sciences, arts, fine arts & humanities, natural & mathematical sciences and linguistics and languages. The UGC constituted a Standing Committee, for e-PG Pathshala to monitor and coordinate the activity of e-content creation in an effective and efficient manner. Guidelines were finalised for development of e-content and for Content writers by UGC. Subject Matter Experts or Principal Investigatots (PIs) with at least 10 years PG level teaching experience were identified in more than 70 plus subjects to develop 16 core papers (four core papers in each semester of four semesters).
Volume of Work
The volume of work involved in developing e-content in a particular subject involves developing 16 papers, with each paper comprising 35-40 modules each covering 40 hours teaching duration. The modules to be developed are in four quadrants with textual and audio-visual components. First quadrant defines the course structure along with textual content. It comprises of basic description of a module, prerequisites (in terms of knowledge background of a user before taking-up a module), detailed textual content on the topic / module with examples. The second quadrant comprises of multimedia enrichment of content that may include audio or video clips, animations, simulations, virtual labs, etc. Duration of video is 30 min (Approx). The third quadrant provides links for external resources available on the Web as well as supporting material. For example: Do You Know, Points to Ponder, Glossary, FAQs, other websites, blogs, discussion forum, etc.? Fourth quadrant includes the self assessment material. Assessment and evaluation questions may be in different formats like multiple choice questions, true & false statements, etc
Team Work
This is a voluminous project involving around 72 PIs or subject matter experts from more than 44 HEIs all over the country, including Central Universities, State Universities and Institutions of National Importance who are engaged in developing e-content at PG level. Each Principal Investigator is assisted by a team comprising 600-700 persons including Paper Coordinators(16),Content Writer (480-560), Content Reviewers /Language Editors(10-15); Multimedia Team (40) of graphic designers, video editors, camerapersons, animators 2D&3D, Instructional designers etc)
Methodology to develop & Host e-Content
The e-content so developed is hosted on the ePG pathshala website of INFLIBNET and can be accessed at epgp.inflibnet.ac.in. The site also has a e-PMS platform which provides stakeholders of e-content development team to interact and display current status of development for each subject. The system provides the Profile creation of each team member; Management of Paper / Syllabus creation and assignment to respective team members of each paper; Updation on work progress made for each module; Report generation and Download link for Minutes of Meetings (Standing Committee and Sub Committee of e-PGP) and other important documents.
The University Grants Commission (Minimum Qualifications for Appointment of Teachers and other Academic Staff in Universities and Colleges and Measures for the Maintenance of Standards in Higher Education) (4th Amendment), Regulations, 2016 has proposed scores for research and academic contributions by fixing a maximum score of 10 per module for development of e-learning delivery process/material.
Teaching Pedagogy: The e-content developed can be used as an Open Educational Resource (OER) or as a Flipped Classroom model where in contrast to the conventional classroom teaching, there is no teaching in the classroom. The students watch the video lecture/study material, e-text in this case, at home and only discussion/problem solving and assignments with teachers and peers , is done in the class.
About 18,000 modules in four quadrants in 69 subjects are uploaded on the epgpathshala website.
Imapct analysis of E Pg pathshala
This e-content is available in open access and it is being accessed across the globe, Current data analytics of visitors suggest that several International visitors have been accessing the site with 6459 visitors from United States of America, 1030+ from China and 498+ from Russian federation) . The total no of visitors was 27.63 lakh during March,2017. Even on Youtube the videos are being viewed in large numbers with students, teachers, researchers and other stakeholders providing constant feedback.
Introduction of MOOCS
While UGC was monitoring the development of e-content which has gained momentum since 2014, the MHRD in January, 2016 entrusted UGC with the work of development of Non-Technology PG MOOCs Courses. The Scheme envisages to provide seamless integration of conventional education with Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) through SWAYAM platform (Study Web of Active Learning by Young and Aspiring Minds) by using multimedia on anytime, anywhere basis to benefit life-long learners, Students, Teachers, homemakers and researchers etc. Eight national Coordinators were identified by MHRD for developing MOOCs from School to PhD level for the SWAYAM platform. These are , NCERT for school education from 9th to 12th; NIOS for out of school children from 9th to 12th ;Consortium for Educational Communication(CEC) for Non-technology UG programmes; UGC for Non-technology PG programmes; IGNOU for Diploma and Certificate programmes; NPTEL for Technical/Engineering UG & PG degree programmes; IIM for management programmes and NITTR, Chennai for Teacher Training programmes.
The interest in MOOCs in India is rising in recent past as in evident from data from Google trends (2004-2015) which shown that interest for MOOCs in India is increasing exponentially in the last 10 years. Also, India ranked 10th based on search volume index in the world for MOOC related search queries.
Repurposing e-content into MOOCs
To begin with, UGC organised two orientation workshops for PI’s for repurposing the e-content developed by them to MOOCs. The workshops were able to convey to the PIs the basic difference between e-content and MOOCs. While e-content in four quadrants can be accessed as Open Educational Resource where no teacher support/hand-holding for students is available, the MOOCs on the other hand, will be a structured course where MOOC coordinator/tutor/teacher will be interacting with the learner. A learner can earn certificate/credit on successful completion of MOOCs course on SWAYAM.
To repurpose the e-content into MOOCs, the PIs had to develop introductory modules defining the course design, define pre-requisites for taking the course, introductory video, assessment system, credits to be awarded, starting date/ending date, and expected outcomes. Besides Self-assessment modules, Quizzes and tests, weekly assessments, assignments and discussion forums had to be incorporated.
Guidelines/Regulations on MOOCs
Meanwhile, Guidelines for development and implementation of MOOCs was finalized by MHRD in March, 2016 and circulated to all Principal Investigators(s) and uploaded on e-PG pathshala website. UGC (Credit Framework for Online Learning Courses through SWAYAM) Regulation, 2016 were issued on 19th July, 2016. The regulations stipulated that online learning courses will be made available on the SWAYAM platform. On 1st June and 1st November every year, SWAYAM will notify these courses, on the portal.
The highlight of the SWAYAM courses is that a student studying at a recognized institute anywhere in the country and having cleared the Online Course through SWAYAM, shall be awarded Credits and the credits earned by such a student shall be transferred from the Host Institute to the Parent Institute where the student is studying. Up to 20% of the total courses being offered in a particular program in a Semester could be opted by students through MOOCs. The regulations clearly define the roles of the parent institution, i.e. institution opting for MOOCs courses on SWAYAM and the Host Institution where the PI offering the MOOCs course belongs.
Evaluation and Certification of MOOCs
The host institution and the PI would evaluate the students based on predefined norms. The parent Institution will incorporate the marks/grade obtained by the student, in the final marks sheet. In subjects where lab experiments or practicals are involved, the parent institution will evaluate and incorporate these marks/grade in the overall marks/grade. A certificate regarding successful completion of the MOOCs course shall be issued through the Host Institution and sent to the Parent Institution.
UGC MOOCS on SWAYAM
UGC has developed 72 MOOC courses (Non-technology) for PG level in first phase out of which 43courses are hosted on the SWAYAM platform. For Phase II another 72 MOOC courses are being prepared.
UGC has written to all Vice -Chancellors to initiate action for introduction of MOOCs courses through SWAYAM after approval of the various academic bodies of the respective Universities. Most of the universities have welcomed the idea and are in the process of identifying courses, and getting the approval from their statutory bodies which is a very encouraging sign. The SWAYAM platform was formally launched by the President of India, and Minister of Human Resource Development on 9th July, 2017, at Vigyan Bhawan, New Delhi.
DTH SWAYAM-PRABHA
Another initiative of MHRD to disseminate the audio-visual content developed as part of e-Content and MOOCS was the launch of 32 Direct-To-Home (DTH) educational TV channels called “SWAYAM Prabha” . These channels are broadcasting educational content in diverse disciplines of four hours every day, telecast six times a day allowing the student to choose the time of his/her convenience.
Content telecast covers all level of education: School education, undergraduate, postgraduate, engineering, out of school children, vocational courses and teacher training of the 32 channels, ten Channels for broadcasting have been allotted to UGC by MHRD. UGC has provided the video content for running these 10 channels to CEC, an Inter University Centre of UGC which is equipped to undertake such tasks.
Outcome of the Technology Enabled Learning Initiatives
Different pedagogies in the form of EPG pathshala( OER & Flip Classroom model), MOOCs and DTH would provide students and teachers with different approaches to learning and innovation in teaching , and optimally use the resources and time on hand.
The MOOCs will address the problem of faculty shortage in Universities & Colleges, by providing students with the best quality faculty from all over the country . Students will be able to earn 20 percent credits through MOOCs. The project would also help the students and teachers to update their knowledge and skill especially for those located in rural/backward/remote areas and would successfully bridge the digital divide and would help the nation move towards information-rich society.
