1) SAMADHAN Challenge

Context: Amid the coronavirus outbreak, the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MoHRD) launched "Samadhan" to fight against COVID-19.

About Samadhan

• It is an initiative of the Innovation Cell of the MoHRD and All India Council for Technical Education in collaboration with Forge and InnovatioCuris.
• It is aimed at testing the ability of students to innovate.
• The students participating in this challenge will search and develop such measures that can be made available to the government agencies, health services, hospitals and other services for quick solutions to the Coronavirus epidemic and other such calamities.
• Through this challenge, work will be done to make citizens aware, to motivate them, to face any challenge, to prevent any crisis and to help people get livelihood.
• Under the "Samadhan" challenge, the students and faculty will be motivated for doing new experiments and new discoveries and provide them with a strong base leading to spirit of experimentation and discovery.
• The success of this program depends on the effectiveness of the ideas of participating contestants with ability to find solutions, technically and commercially.

2) AICTE Covid-19 Student Portal 

Context: Recently,Union HRD Minister launches MHRD AICTE COVID-19 Student Helpline Portal.

About AICTE COVID-19 Student Portal

• It is launched to address the issues and difficulties faced by students due to closure of colleges and hostels.
• It is aimed at connecting those who are willing to provide help with those who need help.
• The nature of support includes Accommodation, Food, on line Classes, Attendance, Examinations, Scholarships, Health, Transport, Harassment etc.
• Around 6500 colleges have already come forward to provide support at such a crucial juncture. 
• Students in difficulty are encouraged to get connected with them through this portal directly.

About All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE)

• It was set up in 1945 as a national-level apex advisory body.
• Its aim is to conduct a survey on the facilities available for technical education and to promote development in the country in a coordinated and integrated manner.
• The AICTE Act, 1987 was constituted to provide for the establishment of an All India Council for Technical Education with a view to proper planning and co-ordinated development of a technical education system throughout the country.

3) About SWAYAM Portal

• SWAYAM (Study Webs of Active–Learning for Young Aspiring Minds) is a programme initiated by Government of India and designed to achieve the three cardinal principles of Education Policy viz., access, equity and quality.
• Formation: SWAYAM platform is developed by Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) and NPTEL, IIT Madras with the help of Google Inc. and Persistent Systems Ltd. 
• Capacity: It would be ultimately capable of hosting 2000 courses and 80000 hours of learning: covering school, under-graduate, post-graduate, engineering, law and other professional courses.
• Objective: The objective of this effort is to take the best teaching learning resources to all, including the most disadvantaged. SWAYAM seeks to bridge the digital divide for students who have hitherto remained untouched by the digital revolution and have not been able to join the mainstream of the knowledge economy.

Other Platform: The Education portals of NCERT like Diksha, e-pathasala, NROER and NIOS and the other ICT initiatives like Robotics education (e-Yantra), Open Source Software for Education (FOSSEE), Virtual experiments (Virtual Labs) and Learning programming (Spoken tutorial) are also experiencing very large access rates.

4) Some of the digital initiatives/platforms of Ministry of HRD are as follows:

• DIKSHA: Diksha has more than 80000 e-Books for class 12th created by CBSE, NCERT and States/UTs which are available in multiple languages.
• e-PATHSHALA: In this web portal NCERT has deployed 1886 audios, 2000 videos, 696 e-books (e-Pubs) and 504 Flip Books for classes 1st to 12th in different languages.
• National Repository of Open Educational Resources (NROER): NROER portal has a total of 14527 files including 401 collections, 2779 documents, 1345 interactive, 1664 audios, 2586 images and 6153 videos on different languages.
• SWAYAM: SWAYAM is the national online education platform hosting 1900 courses covering both school (class IX to XII) And Higher Education (under graduate, post graduate programs) in all subjects including engineering, humanities and social sciences, law and management courses.
• SWAYAM PRABHA: It has 32 D2H TV channels transmitting educational contents on 24/7 basis. These channels are available for viewing all across all across the country using DD free Dish set top box and antenna. The channels cover both school education and Higher Education. 

5) About Corona Studies Series

• The ‘Corona Studies Series’ seeks to be a long-term contribution to prepare and engage readers with the various aspects of the Corona times by bringing out affordable books in various Indian languages in the identified subject areas. 
• It will also provide suitable platform to authors and researchers willing to contribute in this genre
• The series will document and provide relevant reading materials for all age-groups for the post-Corona readership needs.
• Books focused on art, literature, folklore, economic and sociological aspects, science/health awareness emerging out of the Corona pandemic, and the lockdown, are also being prepared.
• #StayHomeIndiaWithBooks initiative was also started by the NBT.
• The pdfs of some of the select and bestselling books have been provided for free download. This is to encourage people to stay in/home to contain the spread of COVID-19.