Sakshat is a landmark initiative of the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) to develop a One Stop Education Portal for addressing all the education and learning related needs of students, scholars, teachers and lifelong learners. The portal envisages providing one stop solution to educational requirements of learners ranging from K to 20 covering all fields of study including vocational education and learning for life skills.

In Indian scenario where there is vast disparity of educational facilities available in various regions across the country, the Portal will help in bridging the gap by providing just in time quality educational resources and teachers 24×7 to learners irrespective of their social, economic and educational status. It is an endeavor through which MHRD is going to synergize the efforts taken by the educational organizations/ agencies viz. UGC, AICTE, IGNOU, NCERT, KVS, NVS, CBSE, IITS, IISc etc. to develop world class content. Senior faculty members from different universities, research institutes and institutions of higher learning are contributing to the development of the Portal.

Main Objectives Of The Portal

·    Provide barrier-free web based learning resources uniformly across the country;

·    Develop a repository of world class interactive multimedia learning content;

·    Nurture learners by providing web-based guidance and encouragement through synchronous and asynchronous modes of interaction;

·    Help in honing skills and knowledge through online mentoring and testing services;

·    Provide a platform for sharing of knowledge and experience among teachers and learners;

·            Regularly monitor the progress of scholars and other learners based on the performance in customized online tests;

·            Facilitate learners to make informed decision on choice of profession through online career counselling facility;

·          Nurture those who aspire for excellence.          

Website Developed at IGNOU

Sakshat website developed at IGNOU represents three tier architecture with presentation logic developed using HTML, JavaScript, and ASP.Net, business logic written in VB.Net and C# and the data repository is running on SQL Server 2000.

            The Portal has the following five functional modules:

·            Educational Resources:  these help the learner to explore through the vast knowledge base available on the net in the form of e-books, e-journals, digital repository, digital library etc. Most of the sources listed are open source material.

·            Scholarship: this module is specifically meant for scholarship holders at national and state levels to keep track of their progress and keep them informed about other scholarship opportunities through news feeds and announcements.

·    Testing: this module enables the learners to test and upgrade their skills and knowledge through online testing, skill upgradation tools, and guided learning environment.

·            Superachiever: this is a special facility for those who aspire for excellence. Links are provided to various Olympiad sites to help them in testing and upgrading their capabilities to face competitive examinations in life.

·    Interact: this module provides a platform for the learners to interact with their teachers, mentors and peer group in real time or asynchronously. Tools provided for interaction includes, e-mail, weblogging, webcasting, online chat, discussion forum. Other facilities include career counseling and a platform for uploading content and quiz by teachers.

Apart from the above modules the Portal has an inbuilt virtual class rich with multimedia learning resources. The topics under study for each subject have been divided into four quadrants comprising e-content, web resources, e-tutor and self-assessment. Other facilities include newsfeed service, useful links, announcements and digital literacy module.

Strong authentication module is available in the Portal for access control of different facilities of the site to different levels of users viz. scholars, learners, teachers and institutions.  The registered users can view their profiles in terms of their performance on the basis of the online monthly tests.

For teachers there is an independent module for uploading content on the Portal. The content uploaded by the teachers are reviewed online by the Content Advisory Group identified for the purpose, which is finally vetted and authenticated by the Chairperson of the group before uploading. 

Portal Developed at NIC

The Portal developed by NIC provides links to vast knowledge resources, educational news, examination alerts, sample papers and other useful links available on the web. It has an inbuilt repository of educational resources and online testing facility. The education helpline has interactive features like- talk to a teacher, post a query, discussion forum, web conferencing and career counselling.

Future Plans

As far as content generation is concerned, Sakshat is concentrating on the discipline areas pertaining to Senior Secondary curriculum. Once this part gets stabilized the Portal is supposed to take up e-content generation in respect of the secondary, elementary and primary level curricula. It would also create and host content for the undergraduate, postgraduate level and scholars pursuing M. Phil and Ph. D.

This portal would be one of the important pillars of the National Mission on Education during the 11^th Five Year Plan.  The National Mission would address the requirement of providing broadband access to every Indian with zero charge for the bandwidth if this portal and its links are accessed.  Development  of low cost, affordable and appropriate access devices having very low power consumption would be yet another challenge for the Mission.

Addressing the Challenges

In order to ensure that usufructs of ICT revolution reach every one even on the other side of the digital divide, five renowned Institutions are anchoring the efforts in various challenge areas as indicated below:

i)          IISc, Bangalore & IIT, Chennai: Development of a very low cost and low power consuming access devices and challenges of providing broadband connectivity for every Indian, preferably free of cost for educational purposes.

ii)          IIT Kharagpur:   Pedagogical issues; multi-lingual content; content based on other cognitive faculties

iii)     Jadavpur University: Standardisation and quality assurance of the content

iv)         IIT Delhi: Virtual Laboratories

v)          IT-BHU, Varanasi: Digital Literacy to empower even illiterates to derive benefits of  ICT in their day to day life.

vi)         IGNOU   : Contact coordination and facilitation.

             The website can be accessed at www.sakshat.ac.in;  www.sakshat.edu.in; www.sakshat.ernet.in; http://sakshat.gov.in.         The launch of ‘Sakshat’ pilot Project is a sincere effort to ensure that no person is deprived of education for economic or social reasons as highlighted in the National Common Minimum Programme. (PIB Features)