IITs, IIMs to offer online courses from 2015: HRD Minister

The Union Human Resource Development (HRD) Minister Smriti Irani said Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) to offer online courses from 2015.

It is a good news new for the candidates aspiring to go for online courses from IITs and IIMs professors.

As per the reports, less fee would be charged for the certification of the online course. For SC/ST and Pwd candidates the course would be offered fee-of-cost.

Under the Swayam Bharat Program, IITs and IIMs offers Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) in the future days. The central government show keen interest in developing online education across the country.

In the budget, Rs 100 crore was earmarked for online education for MOOCs as well as virtual classrooms. MOOCs may contribute towards attaining the target of training 500 million people by the year 2022, say industry experts.

Most of the IITs and IIMs are collaborating with the international institutes as well as government to deliver MOOCs.

However, some of the industry experts claimed that MOOCs have limited scope of filling the skills gap as they are based on one-way communication.