MOOCs under UGC- SWAYAM Platform

MOOCs (Massive Open Online Course) are online learning courses designed for large-scale participation and open enrollment by the public. MOOCs are designed by university instructors and offer course-credit to students enrolled at the hosting institution. MOOCs are typically collaborative efforts by higher education institutions and consortiums such as Coursera, Udacity and edX. Despite criticism surrounding completion rates, MOOCs are thought to reflect a new generation of open learning, in which network technologies are used to facilitate interaction between communities of scholars and students with no institutional or geographical limits.

MOOCs (Massive Online Open Courses) is done through a platform that facilitates hosting of all the courses, taught in classrooms from Class 9th to post-graduation to be accessed by anyone, anywhere at any time. All the courses are interactive, prepared by the best teachers in the country and are available, free of cost to any learner. More than 1,000 specially chosen faculty and teachers from across the country have participated in preparing these courses.

The MOOCs hosted on SWAYAM platform are in 4 quadrants – (1) Video Lectures, (2) specially prepared Reading Material that can be downloaded/printed (3) self-assessment tests through tests and quizzes and (4) an online discussion forum for clearing the doubts. Steps have been taken to enrich the learning experience by using audio-video and multi-media and state of the art pedagogy / technology.

In order to ensure that best quality content is produced and delivered, nine National Coordinators have been appointed. They are:

• UGC(University Grants Commission) for non technical post-graduation education
• CEC(Consortium for Educational Communication) for under-graduate education
• AICTE(All India Council for Technical Education) for self-paced and international courses
• NPTEL(National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning) for Engineering
• NCERT (National Council of Educational Research and Training) for school education
• NIOS (National Institute of Open Schooling) for school education
• IGNOU (Indira Gandhi National Open University) for out-of-school students
• IIMB (Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore) for management studies
• NITTTR (National Institute of Technical Teachers Training and Research) for Teacher Training programme

Courses delivered through SWAYAM are available free of cost to the learners, however learners wanting a SWAYAM certificate should register for the final proctored exams that come at a fee and attend in-person at designated centers on specified dates. Eligibility for the certificate will be announced on the course page and learners will get certificates only if this criteria is matched. Universities/colleges approving credit transfer framework (UGC regulation 2016) for these courses can use the marks/certificate obtained through the UGC- SWAYAM

Courses are two types-

MOOCs (SWAYAM) Courses are of two types (i.e. 1.Credit Courses 2. Non Credit Courses) and opened to adopt on first week of June and November months each year in beginning of the academic semesters.