Students can now take e-courses in other varsities

Students will be allowed to take online courses in select subjects offered by other universities, and the credits earned will be transferred to their college mark sheets.

The new system will kick in from the coming academic year.

The University Grants Commission (UGC), which uploaded all the online courses that would be offered by varsities across the country on its website on Wednesday, has asked the country’s central universities to introduce online courses under the government’s ambitious Swayam (Study Web of Active Learning by Young and Aspiring Minds) platform.

The guidelines — called the UGC (credit framework for online learning courses through Swayam) 2016 — were issued on July 19. They were passed at a meeting of the commission recently, and later approved by the HRD ministry.

Sources said the project would be formally launched in mid-August. Over 2,000 online courses will be brought out for three crore learners under the Swayam project.

The guidelines underlined that no university would be able to deny credit mobility to a student opting for online courses. “The parent institution shall give equivalent credit weightage to students for credits earned through online learning courses in the credit plan of the programme. No university shall refuse credit mobility to any student…” However, an institution would be allowed to put up only 20% of the total seats being offered in a particular programme per semester on the online platform.

An HRD official said the move would enhance the overall standard of higher education in the country.