A year after launching online certification courses, the Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad (IIM-A) is now planning to offer similar certification courses in Indian languages including Bengali, Hindi and Tamil.

“We will finish one year of launching online certification courses at the end of this month. I can say we have had a very good start. More than 2.8 lakh students have enrolled in our courses being offered on three online platforms and 12,000 of those have completed their respective course,” Aditya Christopher Moses, chairperson, Asynchronous Learning, IIMA said while speaking to businessline about the open-learning initiative of the institute.

“In the future, the idea is also to launch courses in Indian languages. You need to decolonise education. Why should we stop anyone who is not comfortable in the English language from getting knowledge? Hindi we have started. Going forward we have proposals to launch more courses in Hindi, Tamil and Bengali,” he added.

The confidence to launch more online courses in Indian languages comes after the success of a course titled “Digital Transformation: Theory and Applications” conducted by IIMA professor Pankaj Setia in Hindi, saw an enrollment of 10,000. ‘This is the first course that IIMA is offering in Hindi,’‘ said Professor Moses who is also an assistant professor of Human Resources at the institute.

Right now IIMA offers free of cost courses on three platforms --- Coursera, Swayam and Online@IIMA. “Launched a year ago, Online@IIMA marked our entry in the asynchronous learning space, aiming to extend our renowned course to working professionals globally. We have strategically developed courses and specialisations to address the ever evolving needs of today’s business landscape. Besides hosting courses on our platform, partnering with Coursera and Swayam has significantly expanded our reach and the impressive engagement numbers are a testament to our commitment to democratising knowledge through this accessible platform,” Professor Bharat Bhaskar, Director IIMA said.

 “The idea is to offer different courses on different platforms. Coursera we are offering five courses, on Swayam we are offering two courses and at Onlline@IIMA we are offering one course. These courses are six weeks long. But there is no time limit for the candidates to complete these courses,’ Professor Moses said. Of the total 2.8 lakh enrollments in these certificate courses, 30,0000 are international learners from 190 countries. The highest enrolment is for a course on “Leadership Skills by Professor Vishal Gupta. This course has an enrollment of 1.47 lakh students.

Related Topics
comment COMMENT NOW