Online Open Courseware: A Pragmatic Approach to Democratise Education in India

Abstract

“The more one knows, the more one will be able to control events.” Francis Bacon. Massive Online Open Courseware is open and free course material available via internet which due to their reach beyond the barriers of space and time can be utilized as a tool to democratize education system in India. The National Mission on Education through ICT envisages the creation of such human resources which are capable of transforming Indian economy to knowledge economy with the integration of ICT in education which facilitates new content generation, connectivity and knowledge network, leading to critical thinking. The civilizations, economies, education, teaching methodologies and curricula continuously keep on evolving themselves through the prism of time. New opportunities for growth and overall development in the sectors of human index, education, jobs, industries, infrastructure, wealth creation and cultural amalgamation can only be fuelled through education and knowledge. Open courseware in India for her rich cultural diversities and uneven distributed population in terms of socio-economic-educational parameters can be the best option to plug such uneven gaps. The present paper overviews the open courseware initiatives under National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL) and also briefly discusses e PG Pathshala for their value addition in the present scenario of higher education in India.