Annual Refresher Programme In Teaching (ARPIT) | 21 Mar 2020

Why in News

Recently, the Union Minister for Human Resource Development (HRD) informed Parliament about the Annual Refresher Programme In Teaching (ARPIT).

  • 37,199 teachers were trained in 2018-19 under this program whereas in 2019-20, 1,46,919 teachers were trained.

Key Points

  • It is an initiative for online professional development of 15 lakh higher education faculty using the Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) platform SWAYAM.
  • For implementing ARPIT, 75 discipline-specific institutions have been identified and notified as National Resource Centres (NRCs).
    • NRCs prepare online training material with focus on latest developments in a discipline, new & emerging trends, pedagogical improvements and methodologies for transacting revised curriculum.
    • NRCs are located in a mixed range of institutions such as, Central Universities, IISc, IUCAA, IITs, IISERs, NITs, State Universities.
  • The training materials are uploaded and made available through SWAYAM. NRC also publishes the list of the faculty who have been certified.

Massive Open Online Course

  • MOOC is a free Web-based distance learning program that is designed for the participation of large numbers of geographically dispersed students. The government has launched SWAYAM platform for open online courses.

SWAYAM

  • SWAYAM platform is indigenously developed by the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) and All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) with the help of Microsoft.
  • It is designed to achieve the three cardinal principles of Education Policy viz.access, equity and quality.
  • The objective of this effort is to take the best teaching learning resources to all, including the most disadvantaged.

Source:PIB