The online learning platforms or the e-learning platforms of the Education Ministry have been accessed over 1.4 crore times during the COVID-19 lockdown. The usage of these e-learning platforms have increased by 5 times during this time, an official statement from Ministry has said.
"The various e-learning platforms of the HRD Ministry have seen an unprecedented combined access of over 1.4 crore since March 23," a senior HRD Ministry official said.
Schools and colleges were ordered to remain closed before the nationwide lockdown was announced. To prevent the academic losses the Education Ministry had encouraged students and institutions to engage in e-learning.
Both schools and higher education institutions have resorted to various modes of online classes and sharing of study material on various resources ranging from structured online classes through platforms like Skype, Zoom, Google Classroom, Google Hangout, Piazza to teachers uploading lectures and class notes through YouTube, WhatsApp, sharing links of digital learning resources like SWAYAM, NPTEL, providing access to online journals.
"The education portals of NCERT like DIKSHA, e-pathshala, National Repository of Open Educational Resources, Senior Secondary Courses of NIOS, NPTEL, NEAT, AICTE Student-College helpline web portal, AICTE Training and Learning (ATAL), IGNOU Courses, UGC MOOCS courses, Shodhganga, ShodhShuddhi, VIDWAN, e-PG Pathshala, Other ICT initiatives like Robotics education (e-Yantra), Open Source Software for Education (FOSSEE), Virtual experiments (Virtual Labs) and Learning programming (Spoken tutorial) are also experiencing very large access rates," the official said.
SWAYAM, one of the largest and most resourceful platform, has been accessed nearly 2.5 lakh times till Wednesday, which is about a five times increase over the figure of 50,000 strikes in the last week of March, the official said. "This is in addition to about 26 lakh learners already enrolled in 574 courses available on the SWAYAM platform. Likewise, nearly 59,000 people are viewing the videos of the SWAYAM Prabha DTH TV channels every day, and more than 6.8 lakh people have watched these since the lockdown began," he added.
The National Digital Library, virtual repository of learning resources with a single-window search facility, has been accessed about 1,60,804 times in just one day on Wednesday, and about 14,51,886 times during the lockdown period, as against about 22,000 daily strikes earlier.
Intermittent Network Issue
Lack of internet connectivity and other required digital infrastructure with students is proving to be an impediment to e-learning. To overcome this problem to some extent, teachers are also sharing slides or hand written notes apart from recorded lectures and live sessions so that students with uncertain network access can also get at least some material. Recorded lectures ensure that a short term problem with network access does not block out a student. Faculty members are doing online chat sessions with students to answer any queries that they may have.
Also, for a large number of students who do not have access to computer and internet, the Ministry is promoting learning through the television. SWAYAM PRABHA group of 32 DTH channels is devoted to telecasting of high-quality educational programmes on 24X7 basis using the GSAT-15 satellite and the contents are provided by NPTEL, IITs, UGC, CEC, IGNOU, NCERT and NIOS.
Similarly, IGNOU's Gyan Vani (105.6 FM Radio) and GyanDarshan, which is a 24-hour educational channel offering the best of educational programmes for pre-school, primary, secondary and higher secondary students, college/university students, youth seeking career opportunities, homemakers and working professionals.
The Education Minister, Ramesh Pokhriyal 'Nishank' has urged students to also make optimum use of these TV channels and digital learning platforms to supplement their learning.
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