National Mission on Education through ICT (NMEICT)
The National Mission on Education through ICT is a Centrally sponsored Scheme to leverage the potential of ICT, in providing high quality personalized and interactive knowledge modules over the internet/intranet for all the learners in Higher Education Institutions in any time any where mode. The initiative started during 11th Five Year Plan. The Mission has two major components viz.
a. Content generation
b. Connectivity along with provision for access devices for institutions and learners.
It seeks to bridge the digital divide, i.e. the gap in the skills to use computing devices for the purpose of teaching and learning among urban and rural teachers/learners in Higher Education domain and empower those, who have hitherto remained untouched by the digital revolution and have not been able to joint the mainstream of the knowledge economy. It plans to focus on appropriate pedagogy for e-learning, providing facility of performing experiments through virtual laboratories, on-line testing and certification, on-line availability of teachers to guide and mentor learners, utilization of available Education Satellite (EduSAT) and Direct to Home (DTH) platform, training and empowerment of teachers to effectively use the new method of teaching learning etc.
The Mission would have a three tier committee system to monitor and guide its functioning. The apex National Committee would be chaired by Minister of Human Resource Development. Ministry of HRD, Deptt. of Higher Education would enter into MoU with State Governments for proper monitoring of the Scheme in their State and contribute 50% of the cost of hardware and 25% of the cost of connectivity in respect of the colleges/institutions/universities maintained or substantially funded by it. Similar MoU would also be entered into with Mentor institutions for private/self-financing colleges/institutions/universities for ensuring that the beneficiary institutions contribute 50% of the cost of hardware and 25% of the cost of connectivity and maintain and sustain the facility created under the Scheme after expire of 5 years.
