Education through Information and Communication Technology By India

Shri Arjun Singh, Minister of Human Resource Development, will launch the National Mission on Education through Information and Communication Technology on 3rd February 2009 in Tirupati at the auditorium of Sri Venkateswara University. This was announced by Shri R. P. Agrawal, Secretary, Higher Education, Ministry of Human Resource Development, at a press conference here today. Union Government had approved the Mission in the first week of this month. The highlights of the components of the Mission will be exhibited during the launch ceremony.

The Department of Higher Education had realized the tremendous potential of the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in teaching and learning process enhancing the capacity as well as efficiency of the Open and Distance Learning (ODL) system by the use of appropriate ICT tools to make the learning interesting and easy through digitizing the learning material thereby converting it to e-contents and widening the access of the learners to the said e-contents. Considering the above, Department had conceptualized a Pilot Project namely ‘SAKSHAT’ – One Stop Education Portal which was launched on October 30, 2006 by the then President of India, Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam.

Encouraged with the experience of the Pilot Project ‘SAKSHAT’, a web based Portal providing various services to the student community, it was decided to formulate a Centrally Sponsored Scheme by the name National Mission on Education through Information and Communication Technology, henceforth called as ‘Mission’, to fully leverage the potential of ICT in teaching and learning process for the ultimate benefit of all learners in higher education sector. The interventions of Mission are to be delivered through the above said One-Stop Education Portal ‘SAKSHAT’.

The proposed Mission broadly has the objective of ensuring connectivity of the learners to the ‘World of Knowledge’ in cyberspace and to make them ‘Netizens’ in order to enhance their self-learning skills and develop their capabilities for on-line problem solving and to work for : creation of knowledge modules with right contents to address to the personalized needs of learners; certification of competencies of the learners, acquired through formal or non-formal means; and to develop and maintain the database having profile of human resources.

The Mission aims for:

(a) building connectivity and knowledge network among and within institutions of higher learning in the country with a view to achieving critical mass of researchers in any given field;

(b) spreading digital literacy for teacher empowerment;

(c) development of knowledge modules having the right content to take care of the aspirations of academic community and to address the personalized needs of the learners;

(d) standardization and quality assurance of e-contents to make them world class;

(e) research in the field of pedagogy for development of efficient learning modules for disparate groups of learners;

(f) making available e-knowledge contents, free of cost to Indians;

(g) experimentation and field trial in the area of performance optimization of low cost access devices for use of ICT in education;

(h) providing support for the creation of a Virtual Technological University;

(i) identification and nurturing of talents;

(j) certification of competencies of the human resources acquired either through

(k) formal or non-formal means and the evolution of a legal framework for it; and

(l) developing and maintaining the database with the profiles of our human resources

For more info visit- http://pib.nic.in/release/release.asp?relid=47053