UGC increases credits allotted to MOOCs; Check details here

An expert committee is formed by the UGC to ensure that more students can avail of the benefits of the courses. The committee will map the existing courses with the MOOCs which can be constituted for the course.

The University Grants Commissions (UGC) increased the academic credit limit for the online courses up to 40 per cent from the existing 20 percent. According to the introduced change, the students can gain credits by picking subjects relevant to their course online using the SWAYAM platform. Taking up the online courses will be equivalent to attending the physical lectures in class according to the norms. An expert committee is formed by the UGC to ensure that more students can avail of the benefits of the courses. The committee will map the existing courses with the MOOCs which can be constituted for the course. It will also help in identifying areas or subjects for which the MOOCs are not available and create digital content for such courses as well.

University Grants Commission also released an official notification in this regard. UGC plans to develop 171 undergraduate level MOOC courses in subjects such as History, Political Science, Commerce, Sociology, Public Administration, and Anthropology, in the first phase of the mapping. UGC also asked the Higher Education institutes and the top academicians from across the country to develop high-quality MOOCs in the said areas matching the international standards.

The official notification released by the UGC states, “keeping in mind the present situation of COVID-19, the Chairman, University Grants Commission has constituted an Expert Committee to map the existing developed MOOCs and identify gap areas where courses need to be developed under SWAYAM as per UGC model CBCS curriculum.”

The commission is doing this along with the recently released New Education Policy which suggests setting up an Academic Bank of Credits which will compile the academic credits earned by the students. Degrees from the higher education institutions can be awarded by taking into account the credits earned by the students.

Earlier, SWAYAM approved 82 MOOCs for the undergraduate classes while 42 were approved for the postgraduate classes to be offered in the July semester. The UGC asked the Vice Chancellors to take the suggestions from the deans of the respective departments in which course each university should adopt from the platform.

Check official notice released by UGC below:

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