COVID-19: HRD Ministry's e-learning platforms being accessed five times more during lockdown

The HRD Ministry's online learning platforms have been accessed five times more during the COVID-19 lockdown period, officials said on Thursday.

"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.

The National Online Education Platform SWAYAM 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, he added.

"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," the official said.

Similarly, the National Digital Library 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.

"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.

The country is under a 21-day lockdown since March 25 due to the coronavirus outbreak. However, schools and colleges were closed at least a week before the restrictions were announced in the national capital.

According to the Union Health Ministry, the death toll due to COVID-19 rose to 166 on Thursday and the number of cases stood at 5,734 in the country.

While the number of active COVID-19 cases is 5,095, a total of 472 people have been cured and discharged and one has migrated, the ministry said.