For Better Education: MHRD Launches Faculty Training Programmes LEAP And ARPIT

The Ministry of Human Resource and Development has launched the Annual Refresher Programme in Teaching (ARPIT) and Leadership for Academicians Programme (LEAP), aimed at bringing a significant quality upgrade in teaching and mentoring of higher education institutions, reports The Times of India.

HRD minister Prakash Javadekar said that these initiatives are set to transform quality of teaching and improve leaders and enhancing the quality of higher education institutions.

ARPIT is aimed at reaching out to 13 lakh teachers across central, state and private universities. It will offer a three-month online certificate course through the government through its Massive Online Open Course (MOOC) portal- SWAYAM.

Almost 75 resource centres specialising in various disciplines would coordinate these refresher courses to prepare and train teachers for teaching students and updating them on new developments and concepts in the field. Courses on 68 subjects have already been uploaded on the SWAYAM portal.

According to sources, though ARPIT courses will not be compulsory for teachers, they will be considered during promotions. The move would incentivise teachers to improve their skills, said MHRD sources.

IIT Kharagpur will coordinate LEAP, envisaged to train academics with leadership potential and help them improve their administrative, crisis management, team work and communication skills.

The training module, which envisions a week-long exposure to a foreign institutes such as University of Michigan, University of Chicago, University of Pennsylvania/ Stanford, Monash University, London School of Economics, among others is developed by 15 NIRF top-ranking Indian universities including IIT Roorkee, IIT Kanpur, NIT Trichy, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Jawaharlal Nehru University, University of Delhi, IIT Bombay and TISS Mumbai, among others.

LEAP would initially train 200 academics every year in ‘leadership and management' skills and aims to train 1.5 million faculty members for leadership roles over the next few years, said reports.