Swayam Full Form is Study Webs of Active-learning for Young Aspiring Minds

Swayam Portal is launched by the Indian Government’s Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) in 2017. Swayam Portal, also known as Swayam Central was introduced by Pranab Kumar Mukherjee (2017’s President of India). Swayam Central aims to provide students with free online courses offered by the top universities of India. Basically Swayam Portal, is an online education portal that offers all its educational sessions and courses at free of cost and students are able to access these study materials from anywhere, anytime. Swayam is specially designed for the users who are financially challenged and can not invest much money in the sources of education.

Swayam Portal users have the access to study all the materials belonging to 9th standard to post graduation. Swayam Portal is specifically designed to promote self-study concepts among Indian aspirants. Swayam Central provides a total of 4 categories of learning sessions or quadrants including e-Tutorial, e-Content, discussion forums and self-assessment. All the different quadrants contain different study materials. Refer to the following to learn more about all the Swayam Portal quadrants and the content belonging to each quadrant.

• E-Tutorial - An E-Tutorial is a quadrant of Swayam Portal which contains a wide range of media to educate students about their desired topic. Swayam Portal’s E-Tutorial aims to teach students with the help of videos, animations, podcasts, and PowerPoint presentations. The content in E-Tutorial of the Swayam Portal focuses on providing students with visual data and educational statistics to help them understand better with a visionary approach. All the media content in Swayam Portal’s E-Tutorial is well-organised and students can easily access these media files to study from.
• E-Content - An E-Content is a quadrant of Swayam Portal which contains a comprehensive range of self-instructional materials to educate students about their favorable section. Swayam Portal’s E-Content focuses on teaching students with the help of e-books, illustrations, case studies, presentations, and other resources. The content in E-Content of the Swayam Portal aims to provide students with self instruction media and files to help them navigate themselves and understand better with their own understanding capacity. Swayam Central’s E-Content quadrant provides students with independent case studies and presentations in order to make them responsible researchers and an active critical thinker.
• Discussion Forums - The discussion forum is also one of the most popular quadrants of Swayam Portal among students. Swayam Central’s discussion forums allow students to  ask questions and interact with other students and faculty. In this quadrant of Swayam Portal, students can get their specific questions answered by other students and professional faculties as well. Swayam Central’s discussion forums help students learn in an elaborative way as it includes human interaction and its content is quite understandable for everyone.
• Self Assessment - Self assessment is the fourth and the last quadrant of the Swayam Portal. Swayam Central’s self assessment quadrant includes assessment for students. Registered Swayam Portal students can access multiple assessment content like multiple-choice questions, quizzes, short answer questions, and long answer questions. By using this quadrant of Swayam Portal, students can learn and practice regularly and keep their memory sharp. Performing self assessment regularly helps students memorise concepts and it gives them an idea of the exam pattern of the respective subject.

Swayam Portal Highlights 2024

Refer to the following table to learn about the updates statistics of Swayam Portal. The following table contains information like available courses, student enrolments and more.

Functionality at a Glance

SWAYAM facilitates MOOCs learning materials through various mechanisms and formats. Learning happens through four kinds of approaches: e-Tutorial, e-Content, discussion forums and, self-assessment.

e-Tutorial stands for the first quadrant, in this quadrant it does not provide much extraneous work from students. Some examples of things include teaching video, animation, PowerPoint presentation, podcast and so on. This can depend on a single subject to another and with whatever approach is designed by the instructor.

The second quadrant is an e-content which can include e-books, illustrations, Case studies, Open source content, reference links, further reading sources, etc.

The third quadrant is clearing the queries of students. Any student or faculty can answer a student's question and this helps the students to clarify all their doubts.

The fourth quadrant is self-testing to see what a student has learned and if they deserve to receive a certificate. This includes tests through MCQs, quiz or short answer questions, long answer questions, etc. In the fourth quadrant, one can also find FAQs along with their answers to clear frequent misconceptions among students.

The University Grants Commission (UGC) believes that universities should take a front seat in popularizing and publicizing SWAYAM courses among their learners and the university, thus permitting them to benefit from MOOCs on a much bigger scale.

Aim of the Swayam Central

Swayam Central has a goal to make education reach every corner of India. Swayam Portal was designed by the collaboration of the Ministry of Education and All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), with the assistance of Microsoft. The current update of Swayam Portal caters to students to access about 2000+ online courses. The word “Swayam” in Swayam Portal stands for Study Webs of Active Learning for Young Aspiring Minds. Along with providing free education to aspirants, Swayam Central aims to remove the gap between students and education caused by financial restrictions and lack of facilities. Swayam Portal is on the right track to achieve its aim as around 4 crore students have already registered on Swayam Central and lakhs of students are actively using it on a daily basis.

Courses Provided by Swayam Central

Swayam Portal allows users to access all the materials belonging to 9th standard to post graduation and many other newly introduced educational concepts like digital marketing, basic electronic circuits, cyber security, organizational behavior, artificial intelligence, environmental sustainability, marketing, abnormal psychology and many others. All the courses provided by Swayam Central are completely free and students can access these anytime. The course content of Swayam Portal include various types of learning sources such as video lectures, reading material in PFD format, text modules, E-content, online discussion forums, self-test assessments and many more like these.

Types of Courses Provided by Swayam Central

Swayam Portal provides students with two major types of courses on their official website. Swayam Portal’s two types of courses are self-paced courses and regular courses. Both of the courses are different from each other in many aspects such as time management, deadlines, student convenience and more. Check out the points below to understand both of the course types provided by the Swayam Portal.

• Regular Courses: Swayam Portal’s regular courses are for students who are available on a regular basis and can attend the session from time to time. In regular courses, students can enrol after the course has started and there will be no option of choosing a convenient time to study. Students will have to follow the timeline as per the course schedule.
• Self-paced Courses: Self-paced courses are quite convenient for students and they can learn anytime from anywhere. There will be no deadline and students will be allowed to decide the time they want to invest in that course. There will be no bound of time as students can start from where they left anytime from anywhere.

Extension of Swayam Central

Swayam Central has introduced two more defined and advanced aspects of it named Swayam NPTEL and Swayam Prabha. Let’s understand the functions of these Swayam Central aspects.

• Swayam NPTEL: NPTEL stands for National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning and this platform focuses on providing all the courses of engineering and technology. Swayam NPTEL offers online courses in a specific field of study (engineering and technology) however there are few selected humanities and social sciences learning sessions as well.
• Swayam Prabha: Swayam Prabha is a chain of 40 DTH channels that aim to broadcast educational sessions 24/7. Swayam Prabha channels are operated by GSAT-15 satellite and are uplinked from BISAG (Bhaskar Acharya Institute of Space Applications and Geo-Informatics) in Gandhinagar.

Success of Swayam Portal in India

Swayam Portal has been widely popular among Indian students and has been a successful initiative by the Indian Government’s Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD). According to the official report of the platform, 3.9 crore candidates are registered on the platform by January 2024, and 25.2 lakh aspirants have been certified after successful completion of the courses. The modern approach of Swayam Central of providing digital courses has immensely raised its popularity among the new generation and it is one of the most successful e-learning platforms in India.

How to register in Swayam Portal?

How to register in Swayam Portal is a common confusion among students. You must follow all the registration steps in order to register to Swayam Portal and access numerous educational benefits. Refer to the following steps to learn how to register in Swayam Portal.

• Visit the official website of Swayam Portal.
• Click on sign up or register a new user.
• Register if you have not already registered and login if you have already registered.
• Fill out all the required basic information such as name, active mobile number, email address and more.
• Review your registration details carefully and click on submit to register successfully on Swayam Central.

Note: Aspirants must register with all the valid details to access all the benefits provided by Swayam Central or Swayam Portal. Remember the application portal of Swayam Central is not active all the time and registration is open for a very specific time period. Those who register within the registration timeline, will be able to access the study materials available on Swayam Portal. The last registration date of 2024 was November 4, 2024 however the deadline can be extended based on various factors such as applicant number, enrolled students, notice availability, application awareness and more.

Governmental Coordinators of Swayam Portal

Swayam Portal has numerous national coordinators that are assigned to manage the course content of the portal. All the coordinators are governmental organizations and they actively work towards creating quality course content. All the national coordinators of Swayam Portal are hired by the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD). To find out more about governmental coordinators of Swayam Portal, refer to the following table that presents all the national coordinators and their concerned departments.