IIT Kanpur is developing its own platform for Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) called MOOKIT, reports the Economic Times. Under MOOKIT, the institution will develop MOOCs around verticals like agriculture and computer science among others. The first two trial courses to run on this platform include Arch4Cloud, an online course on building cloud based applications, and Mooc on Moocs, a course about key concepts, methods and practices in MOOC programs. The educational institution mentions this program saw over 2300 students participate and is currently offering two more MOOC programs. It is also currently offering a ‘MOOC on Mobiles’ program. According to IIT Kanpur, the underlying principles of MOOKIT are to ensure learning is not a fatigue, learning should scale and creating online courses should be as easy as taking them. As of now, the institution ties up with IIT Ropar to jointly give students who successfully complete the Arch4Cloud course certificates of accomplishment, while providing learners completing its MOOC on MOOC course with certificates of participation. Our take: It will be interesting to see how many institutions or courses IIT Kanpur will be able to get on board with its MOOKIT initiative. The IIT’s had previously agreed to join MIT’s OpenCourseWare community, which currently has over 250 universities onboard and claims to have published materials from more than 13,000 courses in 20 languages through its website. Similarly the HRD Ministry’s own MOOC platform SWAYAM (Study Webs of Active-Learning for Young Aspiring Minds), which is expected to launch by the end…
