Online help for Maharashtra students

Sandeep Waghmare, a BA first year, economics student, from Sangmner town in Ahmadnagar district, gets access to course material designed by professor of economics at Yale,at just Rs 50 a year! Sounds like educational utopia.

But thanks to state government undertaking Maharashtra Knowledge Corporation Ltd. (MKCL) this dream is turning into reality.

Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar recently launched Digital University or eSuvidha Scheme of MKCL recently. Speaking with Business Standard, managing director of the MKCL Vivek Sawant who was part a of the team which developed India's first supercomputer Param said, "This is an earnest effort to bridge the digital divide between big cities like Mumbai, Pune, Nashik, Nagpur etc. and the rest of the state and make students more adaptable to today's job market by giving them exposure to IT."

Elaborating on how the scheme works, Sawant said, "After a student takes admission, he or she will be given 16-digit permanent registration number which will be unique across all the universities in country. Armed with this number, he can create his log-in on Digital Universities portal which will give him access to whole range of learning, administrative and general information service."

After registration students can get information about faculty, courses, syllabus, admission rules and procedures, details of scholarship and other benefit programs, educational loans available, employment related assistance, updates on competitive exams, awards and news and events on campus.

Students can also carry out examination related task s through this portal, like filling of examining form, getting examination time-tables, venue, hall tickets, eligibilities processing, etc.

Post-examination facilities like getting e-statement of marks, applying form verification and re-valuation, convocation, migration certificate etc, will also be made available through this portal.

However most the important feature of the entire scheme is making the best course materials available to students, which will help to bridge the rural urban gap to a large extent.

Many net savy student from urban area also don't how to access the material and has to spend lot of time in searching the internet for his requirements.The portal provides quick links to to the best of course material available online

MKCL spent around Rs. 20 crore and four years in developing this Digital University portal. And in the first year of its operation it will benefit four lakh students across the 10 universities from the state who have enrolled themselves to courses like BA, BCom, BSc, etc.

From the next year onwards, students of professional and other courses will also be able to enjoy this facility. According to the estimate, an expenditure of around Rs 300 per student has to be incurred to provide this facility. But students will be charged only Rs 50, while loses incurred thereby would be recovered from other profit making activities, Sawant said.

This is a first of its kind experience in the world as in the other experiments that have been undertaken so far, either administrative facilities or learning materials have been provided but not both together and certainly not on the scale which is being offered here, claimed Sawant. This system has been launched after successful trials involving external students in at Pune University.