PU's EMRC declared nodal centre to produce electronic and digital educational content
Punjabi University's Educational Multimedia Research Centre (EMRC) has been declared as a "nodal centre" to produce electronic and digital educational content and will cover Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Chandigarh and their surrounding areas.
Punjabi University's Educational Multimedia Research Centre (EMRC) has been declared as a "nodal centre" to produce electronic and digital educational content and will cover Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Chandigarh and their surrounding areas.
Earlier, the centre had had been mainly focussing on locating resource persons for making e-content, mainly from the Punjab region.
Professor Gurmeet Sigh Maan, EMRC director, said this responsibility has been assigned to the Patiala centre on the basis of its outstanding performance during the past about one year, both quantitatively and qualitatively, as recognised by the UGC-CEC and the HRD ministry -- the agencies involved in getting the e-content and digital video programmes being created for 'beyond the classroom' category of students.
"The Patiala EMRC, one of the 22 such centres in the country, had created the e-content in the subjects of 'performing arts and computer science' for the global community of undergraduate students last year. The centre now is engaged in creating e-content in the three subjects of 'cyber security, population studies and physical education," said the EMRC director.
Maan said these programmes were important part of HRD ministry's ambitious programme of creating massive online open courses (MOOC) for the postgraduate students as well and had the objectives of enhancing the vistas of knowledge and reaching the doorsteps of those settled in remote areas of the country.
"To meet this objective, the Government of India has plans to allot one DTH education channel to each of the 'functional' EMRCs, in addition to the existing Edusat (education through satellite) set ups," Maan said.
He informed that to facilitate the programmes reach the Consortium of Educational Communication (CEC) in 'virtual no time', the UGC has already released Rs 50 lakh grant to install servers at each of the functional EMRC, which would have direct link between the CEC and other the EMRCs across the country.