ONLINE COURSES AND OPEN EDUCATION RESOURCES IN INDIA

According to The New York Times, 2012 became “the year of the MOOC” as several well-financed providers, associated with top universities, emerged, including Coursera, Udacity, and edX.  During a presentation at SXSWedu in early 2013, Instructure CEO Josh Coates suggested that MOOCs are in the midst of a hype cycle, with expectations undergoing wild swings. Dennis Yang, President of MOOC provider Udemy, later made the point in an article for the Huffington Post.  Many universities scrambled to join in the “next big thing”, as did more established online education service providers such as Blackboard Inc in what has been called a “stampede.” Dozens of universities in Canada, Mexico, Europe and Asia have announced partnerships with the large American MOOC providers.  In January 2013, Udacity launched its first MOOCs-for-credit, in collaboration with San Jose State University. In May 2013 the company announced the first entirely MOOC-based master’s degree, a collaboration between Udacity, AT&T and the Georgia Institute of Technology, costing $7,000, a fraction of its normal tuition.  In September 2013, edX announced a partnership with Google to develop MOOC.org, a site for non-Consortium groups to build and host courses. Google will work on the core platform development with edX partners. In addition, Google and edX will collaborate on research into how students learn and how technology can transform learning and teaching. MOOC.org will adopt Google’s infrastructure. The Chinese Tsinghua University MOOC platform XuetangX.com (launched Oct. 2013) uses the Open edX platform.

 

BYJU’s ONLINE EDUCATION IN INDIA

Byju’s is an Indian multinational educational technology company, headquartered in Bangalore. It was founded in 2011 by Byju Raveendran and Divya Gokulnath. As of June 2021, Byju’s was valued at $16.5 billion, making it the world’s most valuable educational technology company.

Biju’s is an education tutoring app that runs on a freemium model, with free access to content limited for 15 days after the registration. It was launched in August 2015, offering educational content for students from classes 4 to 12 and in 2019 Early learning program has started for classes 1 to 3. It also trains students for examinations in India such as IIT-JEE, NEET, CAT, IAS, and international examinations such as GRE and GMAT.

Academic subjects and concepts are explained with 12-20 minute digital animation videos. Byju’s reports to have 4 crore (40 million) users overall, 30 lakh (3 million) annual paid subscribers and an annual retention rate of about 85%. In 2019, the company announced that it would launch its app in regional Indian languages. It also planned to launch an international version of the app for English-speaking students in other countries. Recently, Byju’s launched new programs in its Early Learn App for students of kindergarten as well. In April 2021, the company also announced the launch of “BYJU’S Future School” to be led by White Hat Jr Founder Karan Bajaj. The Future School aims to cross the bridge from passive to active learning with an interactive learning platform blended with coding and other subjects like Math, Science, English, Music and Fine arts through storytelling. BYJU’S will launch the Future School in the USA, UK, Australia, Brazil, Indonesia and Mexico in May.

WORLD’S LARGEST “SWAYAM” MOOCs PLATFORM

Massive Open Online Course (MOOCs) is a viable model for imparting education, involving conventional and online education.  This Indian version of online learning has been launched on an indigenous platform of learning named as “ SWAYAM” (Study Webs of Active learning of Young Aspiring Minds) during 2016-17 keeping in mind the need to create synergies between the salient features of anytime anywhere format of e-learning and traditional classroom based chalk and talk method to develop a unique content delivery mechanism which is responsive to learners ‘needs and ensures seamless transfer of knowledge across geographical boundaries.  The basic aim of the “SWAYAM” is to achieve the three cardinal principles of Education Policy viz., access, equity and quality having “Four Quadrant approach” like (i) e-Tutorials; (ii) e-Content; (iii)Self-assessment like MCQ, Quizzes and discussion forum and (iv) proctored online examination.

The objective of this effort is to take the best teaching learning resources to all, including the most disadvantaged. SWAYAM seeks to bridge the digital divide for students who have hitherto remained untouched by the digital revolution and have not been able to join the mainstream of the knowledge economy. This is done through an indigenous developed IT platform that facilitates hosting of all the courses, taught in classrooms from 9th class till post-graduation to be accessed by anyone, anywhere at any time. All the courses are interactive, prepared by the best teachers in the country and are available, free of cost to the residents in India. More than 1,000 specially chosen faculty and teachers from across the Country have participated in preparing these Courses. Presently, IIT, Madras has further developed this MOOCs platform as SWAYAM 2.0 version.

As on date, more than 5960 courses from various streams of education disciplines have been hosted on SWAYAM MOOCs Platform and the total number of enrolments on SWAYAM has reached more than 2,29,17,715. Credits up to 40% are transferred on the academic record of the students for Courses done on SWAYAM Platform. (source: www.swayam.gov.in )

OPEN EDUCATION RESOURCES (OER)

Open Education Resources (OER) are educational materials which are free and freely available. One key difference between OER and other educational resources is that OER have an open license, which allows adaptation and reuse without having to request the copyright holder. This definition looks at OER as content or product.

OER are educational materials which are free and freely available, are suitable not just for higher education but for all levels including primary and secondary education. OER can be reused and repurposed to suit different needs and could be available in any medium, print, audio, video, digital. One key difference between OER and other educational resources is that OER have an open license, which allows adaptation and reuse without having to request the copyright holder.

Creative Commons appears to be the most significant licensing framework, but licensing options can vary in different countries. Lack of understanding of copyright and open licensing at senior levels in academic institutions as well as ministries is a roadblock for OER development. Now a number of institutions making their courses available as OER has increased substantially.  Developing countries have emerged as major players. India, a large Commonwealth country and Antigua and Barbuda, a small island state, have recently developed national OER policies.

References

https://www.col.org/news/speeches-presentations/open-education-resources-oer-what-why-how

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BYJU%27S

www.swayam.gov.in

Prof. TIAN BELAWATI, Universities Terbuka, Indonesia, International Journal of Continuing Education and Lifelong Learning Volume 7, Issue 1 (2014)

 

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