Securing marks through online courses in a semester in the undergraduate engineering course will be made mandatory once enough online courses are available, said Anil D. Sahasrabudhe, chairman, All India Council for Technical Education.

Talking to presspersons here on Saturday on the sidelines of a workshop on ‘Make In India’ organised by NITK, Surathkal, Mr. Sahasrabudhe said that currently the AICTE prescribed that five credits, which is about 10 per cent of marks in a semester, may be earned by the student from online courses.

He said this has not been made mandatory as there were not much online courses presently available. “Once it is available it will be made mandatory,” he said.

The AICTE has been encouraging students take up Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) offered by foreign universities. Within India, a platform named “Swayam” was being developed wherein professors from IITs and National Institutes of Technology will be offering courses in the form of MOOCs. .

The platform will be operational in the next few weeks.

Mr. Sahasrabudhe said that MOOCs will address the problem of lack of quality professors. He said MOOCs would provide the theory content, while the colleges need to have laboratories to give hands on experience for students about the course.

He said they need to consider having two syllabi – one for those wanting to work in the industry after their technical courses and other for those who want to continue their study.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> Cities> Mangaluru / by Raghava M / Mangaluru – October 04th, 2015