Kerala - Kochi   

Virtual university to link engineering colleges

Kochi: The Centre for Information Resource Management (CIRM) under Cochin University of Science and Technology (Cusat) has initiated steps to cobble up a virtual university linking the State’s technical institutions, primarily engineering colleges. CIRM Director Ignatius Kunjumon will present a detailed project report in this regard early next week and once it is approved by the University Syndicate, a formal proposal will be put up before the Ministry for clearance.

Currently, 80 colleges and 500 schools in the State have been linked through Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO)-aided Edusat, but the efficacy of the project has been suspect. While the current system allows for a satellite downlink speed of 36 mbps (megabytes per second), which is pretty strong, its uplink speed is a meagre 1 mbps.

The project proposes to make use of Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) plan Non-ISP 1:4 for greater file uplink speed along with Edusat downlink to create integrated virtual classrooms that only require an administrator to monitor student attendance even as actual technical sessions are made available to them in the virtual space thus created.

“The concept has been successfully introduced on a smaller scale in three schools in Alappuzha. If this kind of an integrated virtual classroom is created, all those who apply for courses like Bachelor of Computer Applications (BCA) or M.Sc. Computer Science can be admitted as they can attend classes handled physically taking place elsewhere,” said Ignatius Kunjumon.

The Hindu has learnt that the plan has in-principle approval from the Education Minister’s office, which has expressed its readiness to shell out Rs.4 crore for the project. This apart, four proposals are already in the pipeline to convert CIRM into a knowledge hub of the State.

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