20-Feb-2019: HRD Minister launches Operation Digital Board
The Minister of Human Resource Development, Shri Prakash Javadekar launched Operation Digital Board to leverage technology in order to boost quality education in the country. Addressing a press conference in New Delhi, the Minister of Human Resource Development said that Operation Digital Board is a revolutionary step which will make the learning as well as the teaching process interactive and popularize flipped learning as a pedagogical approach.
The digital board will be introduced all over the country in government and government aided schools from class 9th onwards as well as in higher education institutions. The process will begin from the coming session of 2019 itself. ODB aims at converting a class room into a digital class room and in addition to availability of e-resources at any time and at any place to students, it will also help in provisioning of personalised adaptive learning as well as Intelligent Tutoring by exploiting emerging technologies like Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence & Data Analytics. An expert committee has worked out optimum configuration of the Digital Class Rooms under ODB.
The biggest challenge facing education sector in the country is maintaining acceptable quality standards across the country. Although we have good number of premier institutions, which compete with the best in the world, a large number of higher education institutions and schools needs improvements in quality teaching-learning, as the students coming out of these institutions find themselves unsuitable for the requirements of the society and market. The spread of educational technology and connectivity has given an opportunity to resolve this issue and aim at equity in educational standards.
Launching of e-Pathshala, DIKSHA, NROER,NPTEL, e-pgpathshala SWAYAM and SWAYAM-Prabha DTH Channels etc. by MHRD have provided adequate content of high quality which can be taken to every classroom, and thereby facilitating blended learning and flip class learning. These pedagogical interventions can adequately raise the standards of teaching, irrespective of the location of the Schools and Colleges/Institutes. Such technology enabled learning can also inspire teachers across the country to raise their own standards of teaching.
Implementation in Higher Education Institutions(HEIs): UGC will be the implementing agency for ODB in HEIs. UGC in its Commission meeting held on 29th Jan 2019, has passed a resolution for extending digital education to every classroom in the country by 2022. It is estimated that there would be 5 lakh classrooms in the institutions which are aided by Centre or State Governments. Out of this, based on the readiness, UGC proposed to take up 300 universities and about 10,000 colleges in the first phase covering 2 lakh classrooms.
Such Institutions with readiness to implement would be preferred. For this purpose, UGC will put in place a Portal for all the public funded HEIs to log-in and opt for the scheme giving details of this facility.
For the 2 lakh class rooms, the cost is estimated at Rs. 2000 crores. This can be implemented as a Central scheme, as a loan from HEFA.
Implementation in Schools: Digital / SMART board will be provided in all Government and Government – aided schools having Secondary and Sr. Secondary classes. Nearly 1.5 lakh Secondary / Sr. Secondary schools will be covered under the scheme in collaboration with the State and UTs.
15-Dec-2018: India’s 1st Railway University dedicated to the nation
India’s first railway university in Vadodara: Indian Railways’ big initiative! Railway Minister Piyush Goyal along with the Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani is dedicating India’s very first Railway University at Vadodara in Gujarat to the nation today. This is a big step by the national transporter towards professional education and training in the railway sector. The railway university began operations on September 5 this year to mark Teacher’s Day. The university is said to be PM Narendra Modi’s brainchild.
The National Rail and Transportation Institute (NRTI), deemed university in Vadodara, had opened its doors to the first batch of 103 students from 20 states in two fully-residential undergraduate courses in September this year. It is India’s first railway university and only third such in the whole world after Russia and China.
In this year, two under-graduate programmes are being offered by the university. These are B.Sc. in Transportation Technology and a BBA programme in Transportation Management. These are the university’s flagship 3-year full time programmes which are highly multidisciplinary and experiential in nature.
The university aims to start the masters programme from 2019-20 academic session in areas such as Transportation and Systems Design, Transport Systems Engineering, Transport Policy and Economics, among others.
103 students had already been shortlisted for the two undergraduate courses. The student body remains highly diverse in the institution with 17 girls and 86 boys coming from 20 states. Forty-one students are admitted in BBA (Transportation Management) while and 62 students are in B.Sc. (Transportation Technology) programme.
The Vice-Chancellor of the university is Ashwani Lohani who is the Chairman of the Railway Board of India. For academics, the university has visiting faculty from the likes of XLRI School of Management and Indian Business School, Hyderabad, among others.
The inaugural batch of the university this year has been given a 50% scholarship in the annual course fee of Rs 75,000 by the government. Without the scholarship, the fee is Rs 91,000 for one academic year, including all other charges.
The building’s construction of the university has been designed on the lines of Pratap Vilas Palace of the erstwhile Gaekwad state. As an interesting add-on, The National Academy of Indian Railways is also situated in the same campus. Till the time the greenfield campus for the university gets ready, both the institutions will run from this campus.
The Ministry of Railways has sanctioned Rs 421 crores for the university and its curriculum’s development for the next five years.
For the building of the greenfield campus, Indian Railways has identified a 100-acre plot in Vadodara and is in talks with the government to acquire the same. Approximately 110 acres of land at Pipaliya village in Waghodiya Taluka, District Vadodara is identified by Indian Railways.
17-Dec-2018: IMPRESS scheme has been launched to promote Social Science Research in the country
The Government has approved “Revitalising Infrastructure and Systems in Education by 2022”, as per which the scope of institutions to be funded through Higher Education Financing Agency (HEFA) has been enlarged to encompass School Education and Medical Education institutions, apart from Higher Education. The total authorized equity capital of HEFA has been raised to Rs.10,000 crore, with the facility to leverage additional resources from the market, based on requirement. A total Government equity of Rs. 6,000 Crore, has been approved.
All funds for educational infrastructure in centrally funded educational institutions will henceforth be in the form of ten year loans through HEFA to the institution, the interest liability of which would be borne by the Government. The principal repayment would be undertaken by the institutions in part or full depending on their age profile and financial capability. For new institutions and those which have limited internal fund generating capacity, the entire principal and interest repayment would be undertaken by the Government. There is an additional window of financing for school and medical education institutions where the sponsoring Department would undertake to repay the principal and interest to HEFA. So far, HEFA has approved projects of Rs. 24430 Crore with total loan amount of Rs. 12307 Crore.
The Government of India, in August 2018, had sanctioned the scheme “Impactful Policy Research in Social Sciences (IMPRESS)” at a total cost of Rs. 414 Cr for implementation up to 31.03.2021. Under the Scheme, 1500 research projects will be awarded for 2 years to support the social science research in the higher educational institutions and to enable research to guide policy making.
The Indian Council of Social Science and Research (ICSSR) will be the project implementing agency.
The broad objectives of the scheme are:
- To identify and fund research proposals in social sciences with maximum impact on the governance and society.
- To focus research on (11) broad thematic areas such as : State and Democracy, Urban transformation, Media, Culture and Society, Employment, Skills and Rural transformation , Governance, Innovation and Public Policy, Growth, Macro-trade and Economic Policy, Agriculture and Rural Development, Health and Environment, Science and Education, Social Media and Technology, Politics, Law and Economics. The sub- theme areas will be decided on the basis of Expert Groups’ advice before notifying the scheme and calling for applications.
- To ensure selection of projects through a transparent, competitive process on online mode.
- To provide opportunity for social science researchers in any institution in the country, including all Universities (Central and State), private institutions with 12(B) status conferred by UGC.
- ICSSR funded/ recognized research institutes will also be eligible to submit research proposals on the given themes and sub-themes.
The following will be the modalities for implementation:-
- There will be (4) calls for proposals- October, 2018, February 2019, September 2019 and February 2020. The process of evaluation of the proposals and selection will be completed within 90 days from the date of call for proposals.
- The experts for evaluation of proposals will be persons of eminence and selected using objective criteria.
- There will be a regular monitoring of the progress of projects using the online portal, in which the progress can be directly updated by the Project Coordinator.
- There will be a third party evaluation of the projects in March 2021.