CHENNAI: The University of Madras will sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Consortium for Educational Communication (CEC) which is an autonomous ‘Inter-University Center’ of University Grants Commission (UGC) to jointly offer online educational programmes.
With this, the varsity will be an affiliate member of the consortium, said a statement from the university. The MOU facilitates collaboration between the institutes for developing credit-based courses which will be offered online.
“The Institute of Distance Education will play the most important role in this project. In this age of digital education, the MoU will enable students to take up many courses which may not be currently available on our campus now,” said S Gowri, Vice-Chancellor of the varsity.
N Mathivanan, the registrar, said many students are already availing some of their electives through recognised online courses. “The plan is to eventually facilitate even our faculty to teach courses on the various platforms,” he said.
One of the major objectives of the CEC is the production of educational programmes especially video, audio and other related supported materials and also the dissemination of educational programmes through both broadcast and nonbroadcast mode.
CEC hosts one of the largest repositories of digitised educational content in the country and is also the National Coordinator for Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) for the SWAYAM platform of MHRD. CEC also oversees SWAYAM Prabha DTH channels offering eleven educational channels in various disciplines.