Cabinet nods MoU with Afghanistan in human resource development

The Union Cabinet on Monday approved signing of Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between India and Afghanistan on cooperation in Human Resource Development (HRD) which will facilitate students and faculty of educational institutions in the neighbouring country to register and use the SWAYAM courses.

SWAYAM is MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) platform which offers various online courses "prepared by the best faculty" from across the country.

The MoU would facilitate students and faculty of educational institutions in Afghanistan to register and use the SWAYAM courses. Also, it would facilitate them to upload on SWAYAM, the courses developed in Afghanistan. The required training to students and faculty from Afghanistan would be imparted by the Human Resource Development Ministry.

An official release said that the Indian government would provide access and share the technology of other major ICT Initiatives in education such as National Digital Library of India (NDLI), virtual labs and spoken tutorials.

There is also a proposal to establish Joint Master Degree Programmes between Indian and Afghanistan's universities and institutions.

The release said that the Human Resource Development Ministry would assist the Ministry of Higher Education, Afghanistan, in curriculum development and capacity development of teaching staff.

"The MoU would be a significant milestone in the collaboration between two countries in education sector."

The two countries, it said, have agreed to sign an agreement on mutual recognition of academic qualifications.

The MHRD, it said, has taken up a number of technology-enabled learning initiatives under the National Mission on Education through ICT (NMEICT) and SWAYAM is one such major initiative.

More than 35 lakh students have enrolled in about 2,000 courses that have been offered through SWAYAM. This includes courses from Class 9 to post-graduation and also for life-long learning.

Students can avail credit transfer up to 20 per cent for the courses done through SWAYAM. The platform is also being used to provide annual refresher courses for higher education faculty.

--IANS

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