About Digital Learning and Leveraging Technology
Digital Learning is expected to accelerate student enrolment into higher education and make quality education accessible to all through a range of measures, including online education and Open Distance Learning (ODL), keeping in view the needs of learners with disabilities and substantial increases in scholarships at private/ philanthropic universities for disadvantaged and underprivileged students. Additionally, online professional development interventions are expected to be strengthened and substantially expanded to meet the needs of quality education and ensure standardized offerings. HEIs can act as digital Nodal agencies and offer online and ODL programs. Further Credit transfers from SWAYAM can also be adopted. Activities that will be aimed to be covered in this pillar are adoption of SWAYAM by learners, ODL and Online Programmes offered by HEIs and adoption of SAMARTH by HEIs for digital administration.
To enhance the reach of education to all and keeping pace with the technological advancements, a number of initiatives are being taken to integrate technology in the management of education as well as increase accessibility to learners by leveraging technology, which includes offering Online and ODL learning. 126 Universities / HEIs are currently offering 802 full-fledged online programmes and 121 Universities / HEIs are offering around 1,699 ODL Programmes. Enabling regulations have been made allowing students to get up to 40% credits of courses using SWAYAM platform resulting in enhanced flexibility and on-demand learning. Currently, 401 universities adopted SWAYAM regulations. SWAYAM courses have total cumulative enrolment of more than 5 Crore with 10 lakh certifications/year and More than 16,530 courses have been developed till date. For administration and governance of Universities / HEIs, a technology enabled ERP system named SAMARTH has been launched enabling transparency and ease of doing business across the student’s life cycle (from admission to grant of degree) which is adopted by around 13,000 Universities / HEIs across 32 States / UTs. SATHEE (Self-Assessment, Test and Help for Entrance Exams) has been launched in collaboration with IIT Kanpur to provide quality education to every student who intends to participate in competitive examination such as JEE, NEET and various state level engineering and other examinations and has around 15.99 lakh students’ registered. Students have been allowed to pursue two academic programmes simultaneously at higher education level which will enable them to study more than one specialized course of their interest. SWAYAM Plus Portal has also been launched in collaboration with industry partners which will be base of the envisioned ‘Digital University’ with aims to enhance skill and upskilling, reskilling of existing manpower employed in different sectors.
370+ courses have been developed and offered on emerging areas such as AI, Data Analyst etc. So far, more than 4,10,000 students registered on the platform. SWAYAM Plus has 76 MoUs with Industry Partners covering emerging areas such as Artificial Intelligence, Manufacturing, and Healthcare etc. More than 25,000 Internships also offered on the platform covering in collaboration with Internshala.