ICAR releases advisories to agricultural universities during COVID 19 pandemic

NEW DELHI, 12 May 2020: Indian Council for Agricultural Research (ICAR) has taken several immediate measures to ensure continuity in teaching- learning process during the COVID 19 pandemic that has posed an unprecedented situation and new challenges for agricultural education being offered in various agricultural universities across the country. 

As a part of these initiatives, based on UGC Guidelines for the Universities in view of COVID-19 pandemic and in consultation with academic experts and administrators of agricultural universities, the ICAR has articulated the following advisories for the betterment of academic ambiance in the agricultural universities.

Curricula delivery through e-learning

The current situation necessitates the dependence on online learning mode. Hence, necessary steps need to be taken by the universities to create such learning resources and encourage the students to avail such online courses.

All AUs are requested to take necessary steps to connect each student through various online tools for their classes, assignments and other related activities, so that there is no time lag in the schedule of academic session.

Further, the Universities may avail the available online options such as Google Classroom, Google Meet, Google Hangout, MOOCs, Cisco Webex Meeting, You Tube Streaming, OERs, SWAYAM Platform and SWAYAMPRABHA.

The e-Courses for under graduate programmes in seven disciplines namely; Agriculture, Fisheries Science, Dairy Science, Veterinary Science and Animal Husbandry, Horticulture, Community Science and Agricultural Engineering covering 1107 credits and 15820 lessons have been created by ICAR.

These e-courses are available at https://ecourses.icar.gov.in and the same may be made available to all the students.

 The faculty may contribute for the benefit of students through WhatsApp groups, other social media tools and emails. Even after posting the lecture material online, teachers need to maintain communication with the students and discuss course material with them on a regular basis.

It has been decided that all e-resources of agricultural education available with ICAR along with the resources developed under NAIP, CAFT and NAHEP shall be made available to all the students free of cost.

The details of e-resources along with URL are available on ICAR Education Portal. Similarly, all AUs are requested to share their resources by providing link to the Portal to benefit the student fraternity for effective teaching-learning process.

The soft copies of practical manuals developed with ICAR support also need to be shared through this Portal.

Read Here the full advisory