Establishment of an
e-learning Portal
for
Agricultural Education
(e-KrishiShiksha)
http://ecourses.iasri.res.in/
Activity
of the Education Division of ICAR
Dr. R C Goyal
Emeritus Scientist
Wednesday, April 08, 2015
Indian Agricultural Statistics Research Institute
Library Avenue, Pusa, New Delhi – 110012
Background
 Under Learning and Capacity Building
program of NAIP, several interactive &
multimedia UG level e-Course contents in
different disciplines of agriculture have been
developed at SAUs and other organisations
 The online contents has been implemented
from the respective organisation’s servers
 For remote area institutions/ faculty/ students,
the e-learning contents are made available
offline on (CDs / DVDs)
Present Requirements
Refinement, Updation, Maintenance and
Sustenance of e-Courses developed under
NAIP
For coordination and execution of the
above, responsibility has been entrusted
to IASRI, New Delhi
Accordingly, the following programme is
being executed
e-learning Portal
For Refinement, Updation, Maintenance
and Sustenance of the e-learning
courseware,
A Centralised e-learning Portal on
Agricultural Education that provides
24/7 services to all the Faculty, Teachers,
Students and other learners is being
designed and developed
The portal has been hosted on the server
of IASRI
Specific Objectives
1. Designing, development and maintenance of
software to establish Centralised e-learning
Portal for Agricultural Education
2. Refinement, Updation, Maintenance and
Sustenance of e-learning courseware contents
developed under Learning & Capacity
Building program of NAIP
3. Establishment of an alternate e-learning
strategy for remote area institutions/ faculty/
students
Design of e-learning Portal
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The Portal is developed using 3-tier web
technology in .Net framework environment
The Portal has the following 7 options:
1. Online e-Learning for UG
2. Off-line e-Learning: Free Downloads - UG
Courseware
3. e-learning for Farmers
4. e-Course Content Data Management
5. Automation of Contents Refinement Process
6. System Administration
7. Reports
Online e-Learning for UG
Free Access as Guest User of all disciplines
has been made available to the users
community
 B.Sc (Agriculture)
 B.Sc (Horticulture)
 B.Sc (Home Science)
 BFSc (Fisheries)
 BVSc ( Veterinary & A.H.)
 B.Tech. ( Dairy Technology)
 B.Tech. ( Agri. Engineering)
Access to Online e-Learning of UG Courseware
Accessible to all Faculty teachers,
students and any one interested in the
field of agricultural sciences
For the first time, new user will have
to register by submitting his/her brief
identity details
The email-Id is used for
authentication of the Registered users
Portal usage records has been
maintained in the system
Off-line e-Learning
Free Downloads – UG Courseware
 Under NAIP programmes for remote area
institutions/ faculty/ students, the e-learning contents
were made available offline on (CDs / DVDs)
 In present portal, e-learning courseware contents are
made available as Free Downloadable component
 The downloaded file content folder could be
independently executed from desk top and used for
teaching/learning exactly in the same manner as the
existing CDs/DVDs contents can be used for offline elearning
 This will eliminate the process of physical supply of
e-courses on (CDs / DVDs) by post/courier services
e-learning for Farmers
Linkage of Farmers/Women level short
e-training material under different
disciplines may be made available
Some of the SAUs under extension
programmes have already created
farmers level e-contents for short term
training programmes on agriculture,
horticulture, fisheries etc.
Attempt will be made to collect, compile
and made available through this portal
e-Course Content Data Management
 The Data Management sub-module option is being
designed to provide access to the Content Creation Team
for refinement and updation of the e-courses
 The Activity involved in coordinating for refinement and
updation of the e-courseware by the universities/
institutes identified for the same are as follows:
Liaison with Nodal Officers of universities/ institutes
identified to coordinate for refinement and updation
 Linkage/access to the Nodal Officers, Expert Review
Team and Content Creators of each university/institute
for uploading the e-courseware to Central Server after
refinement and updating

Automation of Contents Refinement Process
 For refinement and updating of e-courses by concerned
team members, a process will be designed, developed and
established for periodical online monitoring
 The process may be established in consultation with
concerned Nodal Officer & Discipline Experts
The operational flow of periodic monitoring process may be
as follows:
 Online submission of refined e-courses by PI of the
content creators team of the e-courses
 Reporting remarks by the Nodal Officers of the
concerned discipline
 Review remarks by the concerned Review Experts Team
 Feedback of User’s community
System Administration
 Generation of UserId and Passwords for Faculty and
Reporting/Reviewing team involved in content
creation/updation of different courses
 Adding/deleting/modifying accounts information
 Resetting passwords, etc
 Briefly the following options may be made available
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Creation of new users with different access rights
Resetting user passwords
Lock /unlock user accounts
Defining levels for process of refinement and
updating
Monitor special services etc.
Reports
Reports useful to the user’s as well as administrators
/managers has been designed and made available on
the portal.
This includes:
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e-courses available under different and/or selected discipline(s)
Degree-wise Courses Downloads
User’s registered for offline e-Courses downloads
University wise courses download status
System utilization statistics at different point of times
Most popular courses among users
Utilization Trend over the years etc
Content creators / evaluators /review team etc.
Refinement
Updation
Maintenance
and
Sustenance of e-learning
courseware contents
Activities for Refinement
Major activities to be undertaken at the
concerned SAUs/organization level
 Identification
of concerned discipline Expert
Faculty Group
 Outlining of course expectations, concerns
and challenges by Expert Faculty Group
 Determination of the gap in course contents
 Knowledge and skills requirement
 Fixing of proposed contents for refinement
 Adoption of online refinement process
Activities for Updation:
For updation, major activities to be undertaken at
the concerned SAUs/ organization level would be
the following:
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Identification of the e-course content creator team
(original content creators and additions and/or
deletion, if any) for content revision, updation and
uploading
Fixing of some time frame for updation and uploading
Updating of the e-course contents as per suggestions
emerged from the refinement group
Uploading of the revised e-course contents to the
Centralised e-learning Portal
Activities for Maintenance and Sustenance:
Software Maintenance
For sustenance, popularization and
effective utilization of the system,
awareness meetings/ sensitization
workshops will be organized by the
Education Division of ICAR in
collaboration with the SAUs and
Institutes identified to coordinate
SAUs to coordinate with Education
Division of ICAR:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
For e-Courses on B.Sc.(Agriculture) : Govind Ballabh
Pant University of Agriculture & Technology,
Pantnagar
For e-courses on B.V.Sc. & A.H. : Tamil Nadu
Veterinary and Animal Sciences University, Chennai
For e-Courses on B.F.Sc. : Karnataka Veterinary,
Animal and Fisheries Sciences University, Bidar;
College of Fisheries, Mangalore
For e-Courses on B.Tech Agri. Engg. : Anand
Agricultural University, Anand
For e-Courses on B.Sc Home Science : Acharya N.G.
Ranga Agricultural University, Saifabad, Hyderabad;
College of Home Science.
For e-Courses on B.Tech. (Dairy Technology): National
Dairy Research Institute, Karnal
For e-Courses on B.Sc. (Hort.) : Dr. Y.S. Parmar
University of Horticulture & Forestry, Solan
An Overview
of
e-learning portal
Some Reports……
Wednesday, April 08, 2015
Indian Agricultural Statistics Research Institute
Library Avenue, Pusa, New Delhi – 110012