CUK’s IT Department holds awareness program on SWAYAM/MOOCs

GANDERBAL — Department of Information Technology, Central University of Kashmir (CUK) organised an “Awareness Programme on SWAYAM/MOOCs,” at Green Campus of the varsity here on Thursday.

Registrar, Prof. Fayaz Ahmed Nikka, Controller of Examinations, Prof. Parveen Pandit, Coordinator IT Deptt and SWAYAM, Er. Afaq Alam Khan, resource persons, Assistant Professor, Department of Law, University of Kashmir, Dr. Heena Basharat, Producer, EMMRC, Mr. Tariq Abdullah, other faculty members of the university were also present on the occasion.

Addressing the gathering, Registrar, Prof. Fayaz Ahmed Nikka said that Massive Open Online Course (MOOCs) are aimed at large scale participation of learners, either free or at subsidised costs. “Features of MOOC course like Anytime, Anyone, Anywhere has made these courses the preferred choice of learners,” Prof. Nikka said.

“Today we have assembled here to make ourselves aware of the latest developments in the higher education. The trend, which started a decade ago, is fast spreading across the world,” he said.

He added, “Online education has been there for a long time now. But since the day it took the shape in the form of MOOCs, it started gaining acceptance everywhere like never before.”

Controller of Examinations, Prof. Parveen Pandit said that as per UGC Credit Transfer Framework for online learning through SWAYAM-2016, a student pursuing a programme in a university could earn up to 20 percent credits through MOOC courses hosted on SWAYAM, thereby reserving 80 percent weightage to the traditional student-teacher classroom interaction.

Assistant Professor, Department of Law, University of Kashmir, Dr. Heena Basharat and Producer, EMMRC, Mr. Tariq Abdullah discussed MOOCs through their PPTs and asked the faculty members to prepare detailed proposals for MOOC courses to be hosted on SWAYAM.

They also detailed out ways and methods to conduct the MOOCs. They further said that the faculty also gets huge academic benefits from preparing MOOCs.

Coordinator IT Deptt and SWAYAM, Er. Afaq Alam Khan while speaking on the occasion, said, “Today thousands of MOOC courses designed by top most universities and educational institutes of the world, hosted on the platforms like Coursera, edX, Udacity etc are challenging universities in their ability to sustain themselves through traditional classroom system, particularly when government policies favour the stacking of MOOC courses into a Degree.”

Professor Department of IT, Prof. A M Wani in his welcome address, said that MHRD, GoI launched an indigenous platform SWAYAM to host MOOC courses designed and developed within the country.

As per MHRD report published in December 2018, 1600 MOOC courses developed by different National Coordinators have already been hosted on SWAYAM platform and 90 universities in the country have already agreed to transfer the credits for the course done through SWAYAM.

He said that more than 39 lakh learners have enrolled themselves in different courses and 60000 learners have completed the course on SWAYAM.

During the end of the programme, Assistant Professor, Er. Zahoor Ahmad proposed the Vote of Thanks.