Human Resource Development Ministry has launched a major and unique initiative of online professional development of 1.5 million higher education faculty using the MOOCs platform SWAYAM.

In the first phase, 75 discipline-specific National Resource Centres (NRC) have been identified. They are tasked to prepare online training material with focus on latest developments in the discipline, new and emerging trends, pedagogical improvements and methodologies for transacting revised curriculum.

In a official release Ministry said, a varied set of institutions such as, Centres under the Ministry’s Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya National Mission on Teachers and Teaching located in Central Universities, IITs, NITs, State Universities, UGC’s Human Resource Development Centres, National Institutes for Technical Teachers Training, IIITs, Open Universities and other institutions have been notified as NRCs.

These NRCs cover wide-ranging disciplines of Social Sciences, Sciences, Engineering and Technology, Design and Manufacturing, Humanities, Language Teaching, Commerce, Management, Education Planning and Administration, Public Policy and other disciplines.

Under the initiative, all in-service teachers, irrespective of their subject and seniority will have an enabling opportunity to keep abreast of the latest developments in their disciplines through the technology-based online refresher course.

Faculty can benefit from this initiative as it is highly flexible and can be done at one’s own pace and time. The NRCs will revolutionize professional development of faculty by catering to massive numbers by leveraging ICT and online technology platform of SWAYAM.