Mumbai University set to go digital, start online courses

It will also start 40 virtual classrooms across its campuses, under the virtual education network (VSAT), which will use satellite based broadcasting for lectures.

Mumbai : The Mumbai University is all set to go digital within the next year, an aspiration it has honed for some time. Vice Chancellor Dr Sanjay Deshmukh affirmed that he aspires to go digital for the university. Within the next year, the university will see a string of new long-distance online courses opening up for students. These include courses in mainstream subjects like the social sciences and natural sciences, along with other courses like music. It will also start 40 virtual classrooms across its campuses, under the virtual education network (VSAT), which will use satellite based broadcasting for lectures.

On the other hand, Deshmukh has assured that students of all courses passing out of the university this year, in 2016, will be given digital certificates, a promise he made when he took charge as vice-chancellor. Meanwhile, he said that digital access to marks for previous years has already been enabled for students on the website.

However, these assurances have come despite the undecided fate of its longstanding contract with MKCL, its digital partner, for transfer of digital data of over 6 lakh students enrolled in the university.

The university has also focused on upgrading its infrastructure for all campuses under its purview, be it Thane or Palghar. On being asked about the sorry state of affairs of its infrastructure at the Kalina Campus of the Mumbai university, Deshmukh said, “We aspire to start new courses under the university’s wing, but as they are unaided, we do not have place to house them. In such a situation, we have to make do with the space available, in the gambit of the funds available to us. That is the reason Kalina may have infrastructure management problems. However, during my term, I aspire to change that.”

Meanwhile, Deshmukh has proposed a new concept called the ‘Friends of Mumbai University’. Under its ambit, the civic body will rope in people from across states and countries, who are ‘well-wishers’ of the university, and who will help in the development of the university, on an ideology of philanthropy. Deshmukh said, “These people need not be former students. Besides, unlike popular perception, I am not trying to create a corpus. They can choose to aid us, in whatever way they can, and I plan to collect 1,000 crores this way.”

Source | Free Press Journal | 21 March 2016

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Pralhad Jadhav

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Khaitan & Co

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