IIT Delhi: Arvind Subramanian to give free classes under SWAYAM scheme

Chief Economic Advisor Arvind Subramanian will deliver a lecture series of 10 days at Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi on ‘trends in the Indian economy’  to economics teachers in the second week of June. 'The Summer School for Economics Teachers' by Subramanian will be recorded and made into free a online resource.

 

Among the participants, 100 faculty members from the economics department of various universities and colleges, including St Stephens, SRCC, Hindu, and Lady Shri Ram College, are likely to attend the lectures, The Hindustan Timesquoted an HRD ministry official as saying.

 

They will be spread out over seven days. He will conduct a 40-hour course on the economy, focusing on major economic trends, possibly even the demonetisation issue, which will subsequently be hosted online on Swayam.

 

The ‘Summer School for Economics Teachers’ will be recorded for students to access under the government’s SWAYAM platform. Study Webs of Active-Learning for Yung Aspiring Minds (SWAYAM) is HRD ministry’s initiative of providing open online courses to students.

 

“It was felt that SWAYAM platform needs to be popularised and the lecture series by the chief economic adviser will help in achieving that,” said a senior HRD official.

 

The HRD ministry, however, has extended invitations only to the faculty of select institutes on a first-come-first- serve basis. They will also offer accommodation for visiting scholars at IIT Delhi, says Economics Times.

 

What is SWAYAM?

 

SWAYAM is a programme initiated by the government to achieve - access, equity and quality.

 

The objective of this effort is to take the best teaching learning resources to all, including the most disadvantaged. SWAYAM seeks to bridge the digital divide for students who have hitherto remained untouched by the digital revolution and have not been able to join the mainstream of the knowledge economy.

 

This is done through an indigenous developed IT platform that facilitates hosting of all the courses, taught in classrooms from 9th class till post-graduation to be accessed by anyone, anywhere at any time. All the courses are interactive, prepared by the best teachers in the country and are available, free of cost to the residents in India. More than 1,000 specially chosen faculty and teachers from across the Country have participated in preparing these courses.

 

In order to ensure best quality content are produced and delivered, seven National Coordinators have been appointed: They are NPTEL for engineering, UGC for post-graduation education, CEC for under-graduate education, NCERT & NIOS for school education, IGNOU for out of the school students and IIMB for management studies.