Tamil Nadu - Chennai   

Satyabhama University ties up with ISRO

Special Correspondent

Skills development courses in villages via Edusat planned

CHENNAI : Using the Edusat's power to render skill development courses for learners in remote villagers: This is the endeavour of Satyabhama Institute of Science and Technology, Chennai, which is all set to launch the new programme on Thursday.

The private university has opened 15 village resource centres (VRCs) across the State to offer courses in skills such as plumbing, electrical mechanic, medical lab assistant, and nursing assistantance through the distance mode.

"So far we have not had diploma level courses for these skills. The aim now is create a body of individuals with these skills and make them available for the villages locally. Each VRC would serve a fixed number of surrounding villages or hamlets. We have issued the applications and on Thursday, the programme would be formally launched by the university," says Satyabhama's Chancellor, Jeppiaar.

According to him, the Indian Space Research Organisation is making the Edusat's services available free of cost for the university, which on its part has created the VRCs. The centres equipped with computers having uplink and downlink capability would be make the courses available free to learners.

Live classes

The university has recruited teacher-resource persons at its Chennai centre. The resource person would give the lectures and the classes be beamed live to the learners, via Edusat.

"Nine months of theory and three months of practical training is the model we have developed. For the practical classes including for the medical lab assistant programme, we have tied up with local units or hospitals," he adds.

The same network would also be used as a telemedicine center.

"The nursing assistants we train, would later go on to facilitate the video-conference with the experts at Sri Ramachandra Medical College and Research Institute, Chennai, which would act as an expert VRC," Mr. Jeppiaar said adding that the VRCs could also help in creating and maintaining database of the entire village and its people. Also it could be a resource center to offer expert advice to farmers or fishermen, he said.

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