The Indian Institute of Technology in Bombay (IIT-Bombay) is offering a free online course on Java on the SWAYAM platform, which is open for anyone interested in learning the programming language. SWAYAM, which stands for Study Webs of Active-Learning for Young Aspiring Minds is a government-run open online course platform.
The spoken tutorial on Java has been funded by the National Mission on Education through Information and Communication Technology, under the Ministry of Human Resource Development. The course comprises 43 audio-video spoken tutorials by Professor Kannan Moudgalya, the Principal Investigator of Spoken Tutorial Project, IIT-Bombay.
“Calling out to the Java experts! Master the codes and concepts of this object-oriented, open-source, high-level programming language with the Java course by IIT Bombay on Swayam,” the official Twitter account of SWAYAM tweeted.
According to a news report, the course will be useful for high-school and college students. Software users, developers, working professionals, trainers, and research scholars. Anybody who stands to benefit from the technology.
Java is a technology that has various applications and is associated with benefits like strong memory allocation and an automatic garbage collection mechanism. It has powerful exception handling and type-checking mechanisms. A compiler checks the programme for any errors, and an interpreter checks any runtime errors, making the system secure from crashes.
The Java spoken tutorial available on the SWAYAM platform has been contributed jointly by TalentSprint, Hyderabad, and the Spoken Tutorial Team under IIT-Bombay. The spoken tutorial has been approved by the All-India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) and can be covered in 15 weeks. Candidates who want to enrol in the course can register on the SWAYAM platform to access the spoken tutorial.
Last month, OpenGov Asia reported that IIT-Bombay announced it was establishing a Technocraft Centre for Applied Artificial Intelligence (TCA2I) to grow collaborations between the industry and academia in applied AI. It focuses on research across domains. It is looking at interdisciplinary research in the application of AI in supply chains, logistics, transportation, and cybersecurity, among others.
Apart from IIT-Bombay, several public educational institutes have launched programmes focusing on digital literacy. It is estimated that India will need nine times as many digital skilled workers by 2025. The average Indian worker will need to develop seven new digital skills to keep pace with tech advancements and demand. This amounts to a total of 3.9 billion digital skill trainings from 2020 to 2025.
Recently, IIT-Madras’ Robert Bosch Centre for Data Science and AI (RBCDSAI) launched a fellowship in Artificial Intelligence for Social Good. Early-career researchers or recent PhD graduates in computer science, computational and data sciences, biomedical sciences, management, finance, and other engineering branches can apply for the fellowship.
The fellowship is designed to enable outstanding candidates to establish their independent research profiles and contribute significantly to socially relevant AI research. As remuneration, the fellows will get a salary of IN15-18 lakhs (approximately US$20,000-24,000) per year, depending on the experience (equivalent to Assistant Professor’s starting salary at any IIT) for a non-renewable term of three years.