Sun Micro to set up CoE at Icrisat for e-learning

Announcing this at a press meet, William Dar, the director-general of Icrisat, said the collaboration would bring together the expertise of the two institutions to deploy e-learning services to anyone, anytime, anywhere and on any device.

Kim Jones, the vice-president, global education and research, Sun Microsystems, said the MoU with Icrisat would help Sun use the fruits of its technology to alleviate poverty in the semi-arid tropics.

As per the MoU, Icrisat and Sun will jointly work to promote Icrisat's e-learning services to other international agricultural research institutes under the umbrella of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). Both will work to build a network of learning portals with other institutes in India.

This would facilitate mutual exchange of contents and services through an open architecture, leading towards the development of an e-learning hub in India.

Together, the two institutions will explore projects on the convergence of e-learning along with the creation of a digital library. Icrisat is one of the 15 international agricultural research institutes, which concentrates on alleviating poverty in the semi-arid tropics through the improvement of agricultural productivity.