The new e-learning system is an open-source learning management service designed to provide seamless access to educators, administrators and learners, with a single platform to create personalised learning environments.

There are 13 State-run universities in Tamil Nadu, including Anna University and the University of Madras, providing higher education to several lakh students. However, there has not been a common e-learning platform available to enable students from the universities to get equal and common education.

This is particularly relevant now, as the routine academic activities have been hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, which forced institutions to go virtual.

"To address the disruption, the State-run universities were asked to approach INFLIBNET, formed by the University Grants Commission (UGC), which currently providing customised learning management system to the institutions. The special feature of this platform is its pre-loaded courses, especially for post graduate students," a senior official from the Higher Education Department told DT Next.

Explaining the features of the system, the official said the online learning module also supports some additional features such as multilingual capability, bulk course creation, easy backup, manage user roles and permissions, support open standards, high interoperability, simple plug-in management, regular security updates, detailed reporting and logs, direct learning paths, encourage collaboration, and multimedia integration.

Using this, students can go through the content at their own pace with flexible timings (competency-based learning), the official said, adding that faculty may create and manage courses to suit their students. "Contents of the missed classes can be viewed any time by the students. Also, courses can be learned with lecture, video, animation and simulation of software embedded together," he said, adding how it can help measure learning outcome. Administrators of the institution can do an academic audit remotely using this, he said.

"Desktop or laptop computers with headphone and reasonable internet bandwidth is all that are needed for the faculty, students and administrators to use the e-learning platform," the official added.