12,300 courses for free for students from Class VI to PhD

Bengaluru: To prepare students better for their professional life, a Memorandum of Understanding was inked on Tuesday between Karnataka State Higher Education Council (SHEC), Visvesvaraiah Technical University, All the Public Universities of the State and IT Pioneer Infosys. MoU was signed in presence of Higher Education Minister, Dr C N Ashwath Narayan at Vidhana Soudha.

The Executive Director, SHEC, Gopala Krishna Joshi and Tirumala Aarohi of Infosys exchanged the MoU. All the Vice Chancellors of 24 Public Universities including Bengaluru, Mangaluru, Mysore who were present also later involved in exchange the copies of MoU.

Speaking on the occasion, Minister Narayan said, "The Infosys Springboard platform developed by using modern technology has 12,300 courses to offer at free of cost. These can be used by students starting from class VI up to those who are pursuing PhD and can be learnt online. In addition, this will also provide the eminence of more than 800 educational experts to the students and faculty of the Higher Education and also to the faculty."

For this purpose Infosys has spent rupees Rs 100 crore he stated and lauded the company for the same. The courses on the Springboard will help Universities to update their syllabus. This also enables to import better teaching techniques to the faculty, Minister opined. Further, he emphasised that Colleges and Universities should include the experts involved in developing the Springboard platform in their board of studies. The platform will enable to teach emerging and digital skills for students. This allows to conduct virtual classes and also to evaluate students online, Narayan explained. The platform allows faculty to open their microsites on behalf of their institutions. The Infosys, Head, Education and Training, Tirumala Aarohi said, relevant training will be given to the faculty by knowing the needs through the Springboard. He added that an annual plan will be developed for this purpose. This will help to prepare our faculty as per global standards. The platform which focuses on students between 10 to 22 years has set a goal to teach digital and life skills for 1 crore students by 2025. At present 23 lakh students have been using the platform which is being available in other Indian languages also, he told.

The Department of Higher Education, Principal Secretary, Rashmi Mahesh, SHEC Deputy Chairperson, Professor B Thimme Gowda, Executive Director, Gopala Krishna Joshi, Santosh Anantapur, Head Corporate affairs, Infosys, Victor Sundar Raju, Head, Spring board Division were present. The Springboard facilitates learning programming languages like Java Python, C# at free of cost. This also enables learning basic skills needed for banking space network retail telecom and other industries. Emerging skills related to Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, Blockchain, Coding, Cloud Technology, Cyber Security, Edge Computing, Data Visualisation can also be learnt.