By Aditi Roy
New Delhi, April 13 (IANSlife) Over the past few weeks, the world has seen a paradigm shift in the working and learning styles of people at large, especially young professionals.
Undoubtedly, the COVID-19 outbreak is the major accelerator that has led to a mega shift in digital teaching and learning approach.
So, it is quite evident that when we rejoin the workforce post the lockdown, we might see a need to diversify our skill sets, and be prepared for unforeseen times too.
Rather than binging away to your favourite series or just killing time lounging at home, why not add some arsenal to your capabilities?
Amid the lockdown, National Skill Development Corporation’s (NSDC) is encouraging skill seekers to acquire new skills and utilise their time effectively. NSDC’s eLearning aggregator portal — eSkill India portal offers more than 400 courses curated from various knowledge providers. In the recent weeks, eSkillIndia has partnered with EnglishScore, SAS India, Saylor Academy (USA) and UpGrad, thereby providing skill seekers with varied online opportunities.
The eSkill India portal pivots the online skill creating initiatives in collaboration with global leaders in the eLearning domain and thus enabling access to a wide range of courses for users. With strategic knowledge partnerships, the portal leverages technology in continuing the momentum and enables skill seekers to accelerate their learning through methods like virtual learning and remote classroom.
Commenting on the digital and eLearning initiatives, Manish Kumar, MD & CEO, National Skill Development Corporation, said, “These are unprecedented times and digital learning initiatives are playing a critical role in keeping learners connected and in maintaining continuity. There are a plethora of online resources and platforms that skill seekers and professionals can use to equip themselves with new-age skills in the current scenario. We have several collaborations with leading knowledge providers to facilitate self- learning by providing access to high-quality online learning resources.”
NSDC’s alliance with EnglishScore, an English language assessment app by British Council, aims to provide global standard of English proficiency to the Indian youth. The collaboration brings not just free app access to the Indian youth, but also enables free certification for 1 lakh candidates.
Through its partnership with Saylor Academy, a non-profit headquartered in Washington DC, NSDC opens another gateway to prime quality and global-level skilling opportunities from leading research and academic universities. This facilitates eSkill India to provide high-standard skilling opportunities to Indian youth, with course-credits that are guaranteed by some of the leading universities like Bellevue, Bethel, Brandan, Catholic, Colorado, Southern New Hampshire, Thomas Edison, Maryland etc. The programs are known for their high-quality content and free certification.
eSkillIndia has also partnered with SAS®, the analytics powerhouse, to offer a range of courses on data analytics, machine learning, predictive modeling, statistical business analytics that are useful across all industries like IT, Retail, Pharma, Banking and Finance, Retail, Manufacturing, etc. These new solutions for online education could bring much needed innovation and the user can easily control their career trajectory by gaining comprehensive analytical and research skills that are in great demand in the competitive marketplace.
The partnership with Wadhwani Foundation, a philanthropic organisation, will bring specific skilling and entrepreneurship enhancement initiatives through the portal.
Work-from-home employees and corporate houses can also use their time to enroll and access the wide catalogue of Business / Professional courses and certifications. The users can also enroll in the next-gen analytics courses to discover insights from your data and make more intelligent decisions to drive relevant change.
Knowledge Partnerships of eSkillIndia amongst others include Amrita University, Salesforce, TCS iON, BetterU, Apollo MedVarsity, iPrimed, Liqvid’s English Edge, Fair & Lovely Foundation, IBM Skills.
Last month, as a part of the commitment to fight the spread of the COVID-19 and fully support the public, the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship (MSDE) notified all the establishments under designated and optional trade to pay full stipend to apprentices engaged with them.
Additionally, reimbursement of stipend to establishments under National Apprenticeship Promotion Scheme (NAPS) shall be paid by the government for the lockdown period as per the NAPS guidelines.
(Aditi Roy can be contacted at [email protected])
–IANS
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