Online Courses Offered by Other Universities Can Now Be Taken by Students

The University Grants Commission (UGC) has asked the country’s central universities to introduce online courses under the government’s ambitious Swayam (Study Web of Active Learning by Young and Aspiring Minds) platform.
The students will be allowed to take online courses of selective subjects offered by other universities, and the credits earned would then be transferred to their college mark sheets. Sources said the project will be launched in the upcoming academic session, i.e., mid-August. A list of over 2,000 online courses has been uploaded by the UGC on their website. The number of learners enrolled under the Swayam project is approximately three crore.
“The parent institution shall give equivalent credit weightage to students for credits earned through online courses in the credit plan of the programme. No university shall refuse credit mobility to any student…” However, not more than 20% of the total seats being offered in a particular programme per semester on the online platform are to be put up by the institutions.
The IT platform has been created by Microsoft. The UGC guidelines said Swayam will notify the registrars of institutions about the online courses to be offered in the forthcoming semester at the start of June and November each year.