NPTEL AS A PATH TO MICRO-CREDENTIALS:
AN EXPLORATORY STUDY

ABSTRACT

Multitudinal and multidimensional sectoral transformations, with changes in the education ecosystem and ever-evolving international economic scenario, challenge the learners’ requirements for skill and knowledge upgradation, and lay impetus on continuous competency enhancement and erudition to remain professionally relevant for the industry. Upskilling and reskilling micro-credential platforms matching the employment requirements are the need of the hour and are attained simultaneously with a formal degree or primary engagements. Burgeoning demand for credit-bearing or non-credit bearing micro-credentials, dominantly offered by higher education institutions (HEIs), can be attributed to flexibility, wider out-reach, self-paced, convenience, bridging skill gap, acquiring stackable credentials and niche micro qualification, remaining potentially employable, credit transfer to formal qualification, specialisation and upgradation, to name a few. Additionally, the Pandemic (2020 - 2022) distorted the educational canvas, compelling to look beyond the formal degrees. This prompted the Ministry of Education, Government of India, to launch a project in 2003, the National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL), for providing more than 600 certifications of varied disciplines, through online learning, by a network of HEIs. This is an exploratory study on the contribution of NPTEL for adequate access to micro-credentials in India and abroad with the objectives of: making a comprehensive study of the contribution of NPTEL for facilitating to gain access to micro-credentials; presenting an overview and present status of the discipline-wise courses offered; portraying enrolment trend, gender distribution and professional background of the learners in this project; and deliberating the enrolment pattern, learners’ success rate in the award of micro-credentials.