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28 Digital Initiatives of Government of India in Higher Education

1. SWAYAM (Study Webs of Active Learning for Young Aspiring Minds)

Under the ‘Digital India’ Initiative of Government of India, one of the thrust areas is ‘Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs)’. MHRD, Government of India has embarked on a major initiative called ‘Study Webs of Active Learning for Young Aspiring Minds’ (SWAYAM), to provide an integrated platform and portal for online courses.

Official website Official Mobile App

2. SWAYAM PRABHA

The SWAYAM PRABHA is a group of 32 DTH channels devoted to telecasting of high-quality educational programmes on a 24X7 basis using the GSAT-15 satellite. Every day, there will be new content for at least (4) hours which would be repeated 5 more times in a day, allowing the students to choose the time of their convenience. The channels are uplinked from BISAG, Gandhinagar.

Official website Official Mobile App (Android)

3. National Academic Depository (NAD)

The vision of National Academic Depository (NAD) is born out of an initiative to provide an online storehouse of all academic awards. National Academic Depository (NAD) is a 24X7 online storehouse of all academic awards viz. certificates, diplomas, degrees, mark-sheets etc. duly digitised and lodged by academic institutions / boards / eligibility assessment bodies. NAD not only ensures easy access to and retrieval of an academic award but also validates and guarantees its authenticity and safe storage.

Official website

4. National Digital Library of India (NDL India)

National Digital Library of India (NDL India) is an all-digital library that stores information (metadata) about different types of digital contents including books, articles, videos, audios, thesis, and other educational materials relevant for users from varying educational levels and capabilities. It provides a single-window search facility to access digital contents currently existing in India as well as other digital sources under a single umbrella.

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5. E-Shodh Sindhu (eSS)

The MHRD has formed E-Shodh Sindhu merging three consortia initiatives, namely UGC-INFONET Digital Library Consortium, NLIST, and INDEST-AICTE Consortium to provide access to peer-reviewed journals and a number of bibliographic, citation, and factual databases in different disciplines to the Research and academic community in the country.

Official website

6. Virtual Labs

Virtual Labs project is an initiative of Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD), Government of India under the aegis of National Mission on Education through Information and Communication Technology (NMEICT). This project is a consortium activity of twelve participating institutes and IIT Delhi is coordinating institute. It represents a paradigm shift in ICT-based education, marking the first instance of such an initiative in remote‐experimentation. The project has designed over 100 Virtual Labs consisting of approximately 700+ web-enabled experiments for remote-operation and viewing.

Official website

7. e-Yantra

Project e-Yantra is an initiative to spread education in Embedded systems and Robotics by IIT Bombay, sponsored by Ministry of Human Resource Development through the National Mission on Education through ICT (NMEICT). This project was conceptualized by Prof. Kavi Arya and Prof. Krithi Ramamritham of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at IIT Bombay.

Official website

8. Talk to a Teacher program

A-VIEW is part of Talk to a Teacher program coordinated by IIT Bombay and funded by the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) under the Indian Government’s National Mission for Education using Information and Communication Technology (NME-ICT) along with various other projects in Virtual Labs, Haptics, and Natural Language Processing. A-VIEW is now deployed at several IITs, NITs, and other leading educational institutions across the nation.

Official website

9. E-acharya Integrated e-Content Portal

A portal to host all e-content projects, developed/funded under the National Mission of Education through ICT. There are more than 70 projects on e-content under NME-ICT developed/being developed in various subject disciplines through various Indian institutes/universities/colleges. The portal provides facilities to search and browse all hosted content, enabling learners to easily access desired materials, including audio/video learning material, textual material, and multimedia-enriched materials through a single interface.

Official website

10. E-Kalpa

This project on 'Creating Digital-learning Environment for Design', also called 'e-kalpa', is sponsored by the Ministry of Human Resources, Government of India as part of the National Mission in Education through Information and Communication Technology.

Official website

11. FOSSEE (Free/Libre and Open Source Software in Education)

FOSSEE project promotes the use of FLOSS tools to improve the quality of education in our country. Aiming to reduce dependency on proprietary software in educational institutions, it encourages the use of FLOSS tools through various activities, development of new FLOSS tools, and upgrading existing tools to meet requirements in academia and research. The project is part of the National Mission on Education through ICT, Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD), Government of India.

Official website

12. Vidwan

VIDWAN is the premier database of profiles of scientists, researchers, and other faculty members working at leading academic institutions and other R & D organisations involved in teaching and research in India. It provides important information about experts' backgrounds, contact addresses, experience, scholarly publications, skills and accomplishments, researcher identity, etc. The database is developed and maintained by the Information and Library Network Centre (INFLIBNET) with financial support from the National Mission on Education through ICT (NME-ICT).

Official website

13. Spoken Tutorial

The Spoken Tutorial project is an initiative of the ‘Talk to a Teacher’ activity of the National Mission on Education through Information and Communication Technology (ICT), launched by the Ministry of Human Resources and Development, Government of India. It offers multi-award-winning educational content through a portal where users can learn various Free and Open Source Software all by themselves, in multiple languages and at any time.

Official website

14. BAADAL

Baadal is a cloud orchestration and virtualization management software initiated by MHRD under NMEICT scheme, developed and maintained by IIT Delhi. It ensures optimum utilization of infrastructure and speeds up the development and deployment of eGov applications for academic needs.

Official website

15. Global Initiative of Academic Networks (GIAN)

Govt. of India approved the Global Initiative of Academic Networks (GIAN) in Higher Education aimed at tapping the talent pool of scientists and entrepreneurs internationally to encourage their engagement with institutes of Higher Education in India.

Official website

16. National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF)

The National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) outlines a methodology to rank institutions across the country based on broad parameters for ranking various universities and institutions.

Official website

17. IMPRINT

IMPRINT is a Pan-IIT + IISc joint initiative supported by MHRD to address major science and engineering challenges that India must address and champion to enable, empower, and embolden the nation for inclusive growth and self-reliance.

Official website

18. SAKSHAT: A One Stop Education Portal

SAKSHAT is a pilot project launched by the then President of India to facilitate lifelong learning for students, teachers, and those in employment or in pursuit of knowledge free of cost.

Official website

19. Atal Ranking of Institutions on Innovation Achievements (ARIIA)

ARIIA is an initiative of MHRD, Govt. of India to systematically rank all major higher educational institutions and universities in India on indicators related to “Innovation and Entrepreneurship Development”.

Official website

20. KNOW YOUR COLLEGE

KNOW YOUR COLLEGE is a platform for students to make informed decision on their choice of college in India.

Official website

21. DigiLocker

DigiLocker is a platform for issuance and verification of documents & certificates digitally, eliminating the use of physical documents linked to the Aadhaar (UIDAI) number.

Official website

22. The National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL)

NPTEL was initiated by seven IITs along with the IISc Bangalore as a collaborative project to enhance the quality of engineering education in India.

Official website

23. OSCAR

OSCAR provides a repository of web-based interactive animations and simulations as learning objects for science and engineering at the college level, and maths and science at the school level.

Official website

24. ShodhGangotri

“ShodhGangotri” is a repository where research scholars / supervisors in universities deposit electronic version of approved synopsis submitted by research scholars for the Ph.D programme.

Official website

25. Virtual Learning Environment

VLE is an online environment of e-resources catering to several disciplines taught at undergraduate and postgraduate level, initiated by Institute of Life-Long Learning, University of Delhi.

Official website

26. Text Transcription of Video content

This project aims to provide text transcriptions of video lectures published by NPTEL to support those with bandwidth limitations and for easier accessibility.

Official website

27. SOS Tools

This project aims to develop software tools for analysis of systems and computations, teaching students to use open source software, and to develop simulation tools.

Official website

28. e-PG Pathshala

e-PG Pathshala is an initiative under the National Mission on Education through ICT (NME-ICT) executed by the UGC, offering high quality, curriculum-based, interactive e-content in 70 subjects across all disciplines.

Official website