Vijayawada: Government signs MoU with edX

Vijayawada : The Andhra Pradesh government has signed Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the edX, leading E-learning platform conducting Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs).

The MoU was signed by Higher Education Principal Secretary J Syamala Rao and edX Founder and Padmashree awardee Anant Agarwal in the presence of Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy at the camp office here on Thursday. 

The MoU with the edX, a learning platform developed by the Universities of Harvard and Massachusetts, will enable higher education students learn latest global courses free of cost and get joint certificates from edX and Harvard, MIT, Oxford, Cambridge Universities and other world educational institutions. 

Speaking on the occasion, the Chief Minister said that the MoU will work as a game changer for those seeking to pursue world class courses and attain latest knowledge and face competition on international platforms.

It will specially help poor students and their learning and employment opportunities will grow abundantly.

The MoU will help all higher education students in the State learn modern and emerging courses related to science, engineering, medicine, arts, commerce, social and technological subjects not available for learning in the country. It would also help overcome the scarcity of expert faculty. It will lead to great changes in the learning and teaching of higher education, he said adding that we need to redesign and restructure our syllabus in all main courses like engineering, medicine and commerce incorporating the needed verticals.   This should be done and monitored by a Board to be constituted and all these changes should benefit our students and help them reach top positions in life.

Education Minister B Satyanarayana, Higher Education Council Chairman Prof K Hemachandra Reddy, Principal Secretaries Praveen Prakash (School Education) and J Syamala Rao (Higher Education), representatives of edX and other senior officials were present.