VIJAYAWADA: The online under-graduate and post-graduate programmes launched recently by the Acharya Nagarjuna University (ANU), seem to have become popular among the students.
According to the university authorities, the website of the online courses www.anuonline.ac.on has been already visited by 12,316 people since its launch on July 23 this year. They are hopeful that at least 1,500 students may join the online courses for the academic year 2014-15.
The university, which has been successful in offering the courses through the Centre Distance Education (CDE) in the conventional mode, has embarked on the online learning programmes with a view to attracting more students in the era of IT. The ANU, in association with Schoolguru Eduserve Pvt Ltd, an academic service firm based in Mumbai, is offering 15 online courses with 29 programmes in the first phase through the Centre for Online programmes. As a part of this, each student would be provided with a user ID and a password to enable them to access personalised course pages on the university learning management system.
Vice-chancellor of Acharya Nagarjuna University K Viyanna Rao said that 100 students had already taken admission for several online courses and added that they were expecting at least 1,500 to 2,000 online admission this academic year. “Students from other countries can also join the course,” he added.
He said the fee for the online programmes was 20 per cent higher than the fee charged for the courses offered through the conventional distance education programme. The V-C said the examinations, assignments and evaluation in respect of these courses would also be done through the online system. However, the university had not finalised the exam centres for the students appearing for the online exams, he added.
He said that the university would provide the students with the complete course material, along with video lectures, audio books, textual study material and animated content created by experienced professors and industry experts and added that the students who had registered for the programmes would have a truly interactive learning experience.
It may be worth mentioning here that the ANU is also launching a mobile interface which could be downloaded by the students on their smart phones. For details, one can visit www.anuonline.ac.in.