National Resource Centres roped in to educate teachers

New Delhi : The government has identified 75 National Resource Centres to update the curriculum of different fields of studies and provide online refresher training to the teachers, an official statement said on Friday.

"In the first phase, 75 discipline-specific National Resource Centres have been identified which are tasked to prepare online training material with focus on latest developments in the discipline, new and emerging trends, pedagogical improvements and methodologies for transacting revised curriculum," said the Human Resource Development Ministry statement.

The training is aimed to give benefit to 1.5 million teachers employed in higher education across country and will be imparted through government's MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) platform SWAYAM.

Under the initiative, all in-service teachers, irrespective of their subject and seniority will have an opportunity to be informed of the latest developments in their disciplines through the technology-based online refresher course.

"Refresher Module developed by these NRCs, will include the latest trends in their earmarked discipline by June 15 each year. The training materials will be made available through SWAYAM to all the teachers October 1, each year and based on the response, the course can be repeated in the following January," the statement said.

NRC will publish the list of the faculty who have been certified by December 31, 2018. These NRCs are already operating in various institutions and are tasked with academic work.