Now colleges and universities, including those in remote areas, can interact, communicate, coordinate and attend meetings, all online.
An internet-based knowledge sharing platform named A-VIEW — Amrita Virtual Interactive E-Learning World — will soon connect 20,000 colleges across the country. The platform has been developed under the National Mission on Education through Information and Communication Technology (NMEICT) of the Ministry of Human Resource Development.
This was announced by the Union Higher Education Secretary Ashok Thakur at the meeting of the Vice Chancellors of Central Universities with President Pranab Mukherjee recently.
Mr. Thakur said most universities had a large number of affiliated colleges and form an ecosystem with their colleges. A-View — designed by Amrita University — can be used by these colleges for video-conferencing among themselves.
A-VIEW has been specially designed for online classes, faculty training and online meetings. The system enables online education and meetings using various communication modules like audio/video, Whiteboard collaboration content sharing and other advanced features.
Several universities are already actively using A-VIEW. Some of these include Mumbai University, Pondicherry University, IIIT Hyderabad, and Babasaheb Ambedkar University. According to Rajpal S. Hande, University of Mumbai, “A-VIEW is working very well at our end. We have connected 300 colleges. We are running a programme known as EYES [Enlighten Yourself Every Saturday] and we telecast this programme to all colleges through A-VIEW.”
This technology would enable Universities with colleges in remote areas to reach out to these difficult-to-reach colleges. Some such universities are Assam University, Kashmir University, Bihar University, Jammu University and North Maharashtra University.
“A-VIEW is a very attractive programme especially for us here in the remote areas. We have around 300 colleges affiliated to us and they are all in remote place. This kind of facility will really help us,” Bekington Myrboh, Pro-Vice Chancellor of North Eastern Hill University, said.
A-VIW has already been installed at more than 450 universities and 2,000 colleges across the country. According to Prof Kamal Bijlani, Director E-Learning Research Lab, “A-VIEW addresses one of the most critical issues of India’s higher education system today. Millions of students want to learn, but are not fortunate enough to have well-qualified teachers to train them. With A-VIEW, one good teacher can teach tens of thousands of students simultaneously at different locations all over India, as though in person.”
