UGC approves credit transfer for MOOCs (Image: Pexels/ Representational)

The University Grants Commission (UGC) has doubled the academic credit limit for online courses to 40 per cent from the existing 20 per cent. This means a student can pick subjects relevant to his or her course online using the SWAYAM platform and gain credits for it. Attending these courses will be equivalent to attending physical lectures in a class, as per the norms.

To ensure that more students can avail of the benefit of these courses, the UGC has constituted an Expert Committee that will map existing courses and map them with MOOCs which can be constituted for the course. Further, it would also identify areas or subjects for which MOOCs are not available and hence create digital content for those courses too.

In the first phase, it is proposed to develop 171 undergraduate level MOOC courses in six subjects – history, political science, commerce, sociology, public administration, and anthropology. The UGC has asked higher education institutes and academicians across the country to develop “high quality” MOOCs in these areas which can be “comparable to international standards.”

In its official notice, the UGC states, “Keeping in mind the present situation of COVID-l9, the Chairman, University Grants Commission has constituted an Expert Committee to map the existing developed MOOCs and identify gap areas where courses need to be developed under SWAYAM as per UGC model CBCS curriculum.”

This is also in line with the recently released New Education Policy which suggests to set-up an academic bank of credits (ABC).  The purpose of ABC would be to compile academic credits earned by a student from various educational institutes. Degrees from a HEI can be awarded taking into account the credits earned by a student.

Earlier, 82 MOOCs for undergraduate and 42 for postgraduates classes were approved by the SWAYAM board to be offered in the July semester. The UGC had asked the vice-chancellors to take suggestions from deans of respective departments on which courses each varsity should adopt from the platform.