A screen grab of one of the courses run by the EMMRC.
The Educational Multimedia Research Centre (EMMRC) attached to the University of Calicut has topped in producing massive open online courses (MOOC) in the country.
MOOCs are courses made available over the internet and can be followed by a large number of people. In the July-December semester period, the centre produced 19 MOOCs, the highest by other EMMRCs in India. They were uploaded into the ‘Swayam’ portal of the Union government. The Patiala EMMRC comes second with the uploading of 17 such courses.
The MOOCs developed in Calicut University include ‘Basic concepts in enzymology’, ‘Introductory concepts of digital computing’, ‘Psychology of development and learning’, ‘Glimpses of Indian writing in English’, ‘Literary criticism’, ‘Discrete Mathematics’, and ‘Combinatorial Mathematics’. They have between 30 and 50 modules, of two to five months duration, and are undergraduate level courses. The centre has so far produced over 60 such courses.
The Calicut University EMMRC was the first in the country to develop an MOOC in sign language. It was also the first university and EMMRC to develop a mobile app for higher education. A mobile app developed by the centre bagged the top prize in a national competition for children’s educational e-content conducted by the National Council of Educational Research and Training and the Central Institute of Educational Technology. The centre also bagged the State government’s e-governance award and Kerala State IT Mission’s award in ‘e-learning category’.
Damodar Prasad, EMMRC director, pointed out that the centre has always recorded a consistent performance in its activities. Set up by the University Grants Commission (UGC) in 1998, the EMMRCs are a network of 21 centres spanning across various States. They are involved in developing digital education content by harnessing information and communication technologies for augmenting the learning and teaching process in higher education. Their apex body is the Consortium for Educational Communication, New Delhi.
