Osmania University (OU) Makes Online Courses Mandatory
Osmania University is all set to start MOOCs from next year, and these courses are compulsory for students studying professional courses from this year.
Osmania University (OU) will conduct Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) in all its affiliated and constituent colleges from next year onwards. This move follows the success in the University College of Engineering (UCE).
The university has already prepared MOOCs using SWAYAM (Study Web of Active Learning by Young and Aspiring Minds), an initiative by the Union Ministry of Human Resource Development. These courses are compulsory for students who are pursuing professional courses from this year. For conventional courses, it will be compulsory from the next year. The administration has sent letters to all the colleges so that they gear up for MOOC implementation and they have also been asked to encourage students to register for the same.
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OU will also be organizing an awareness programme on online courses, and all colleges will have to appoint SWAYAN coordinator. For 2018-19, the administration introduced two online courses through SWAYAM in all branches of BE curriculum in UCE.
The college has created awareness among students about the online courses, as earlier, only 37 students had registered for the courses during July-October 2018 out of which 24 appeared for the exam. All students who appeared for exams managed to complete the course. These students have also got elite certification.
MOOCs aim is to give the best teaching and learning resources to all, and this includes the ones who are the most disadvantaged. SWAYAM looks at bridging the digital divide between students who are not impacted by the digital revolution. This has been made possible through an IT platform which enables hosting of all the classroom taught courses to be accessed by anyone, anywhere and at any point in time. The courses are interactive and free of cost for all Indian residents.
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The courses not only focus on increasing the knowledge but also look at enhancing the skills of the students and at the same time, offer them an opportunity to get certificates for the course they’ve taken online or offline, as per the university authorities.