MHRD Launched GIAN to improve quality of the country's higher education

Updated on: Tuesday, December 01, 2015

hrd Union minister of human resource development (MHRD) Smriti Irani on Monday inaugurated the ambitious MHRD scheme titled `Global Initiative of Academic Network (GIAN)' to boost quality of the country's higher education institutes at Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar (IIT-Gn). Irani also launched two 10-day-long courses - `3D Digitization for Cultural Heritage' for IIT-Gn and `Orthopaedic Biomechanics: Implants and Biomaterials' for IIT Kharagpur through webcast as part of GIAN. These are among 201 courses approved to be conducted under GIAN. As part of the network different higher education institutes in India 495 courses. Nearly 200 Indian institutes will host GIAN courses this year. This number is expected to grow to 500 institutes.

MHRD has allocated Rs 35 crore for GIAN for the current financial year. Under the MHRD scheme, 500 international faculties will be engaged this year and 1000 in subsequent years to offer short-term courses and programs throughout India.These academicians will cover 13 disciplines and 352 courses to be taught in 68 national institutions.

The courses vary in duration from one to three weeks, depending on the subject and are free for students of the host institution and available for nominal fees for others and will be webcast live as well for students across the country.

These lectures would be made available later to students across the country. A web portal gian.iitkgp.ac.in has been designed by IIT Kharagpur to allow electronic registration and online assessment.

The Minister for Education, Government of Gujarat Bhupendrasinh Chudasama was present on the occasion, along with a large number of stakeholders of the education sector, including specialists, teachers and students. Two courses launched, to be taught by int'l faculty The two courses one at IIT-Gn and the other at IIT Kharagpur - launched on Monday would be the first in setting the trend and tenor of the programme.

The other course at IIT Kharagpur will be conducted by Professor Nico Verdonschot, faculty of the Radboud University Medical Center Nijmege, University of Twente, Netherlands on Orthopaedic Biomechanics: Implants and Biomaterials. This course will cover the fundamental aspects as well as state-ofthe-art techniques of modelling and simulation for towards engineers, scientists and clinicians.

State education minister Bhupendrasinh Chudasma said on Monday that the Union HRD minister has promised to set up Indian Institute of Information Technology (IIIT) at Surat.Speaking at the launch event of GIAN at IIT-Gn, Chudasma said, "Before coming here, Irani called me and told me about IIIT in Surat." On the lines of Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) and National Institute of Technology (NIT), Central government is expanding a network of IIIT branches across the country. The IIITs are funded by HRD ministry.

MHRD Launched GIAN to improve quality of the country's higher education

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