India has been on lockdown since March 25 and we will have to stay indoors till May 3. Staying at home might seem boring but it has a silver lining — you can catch up on things you have been meaning to do but have not managed to accommodate into your busy schedule. To help you with that, Globsyn Business School's online portal is offering all its courses for just Rs 1 and it is also available on AICTE's portal Enhancement in Learning with Improvement In Skills (ELIS).
The GBS Online is a global platform of digital learning, powered by Globsyn Business School that currently offers five certificate courses — Digital Marketing, Industry 4.0, Performance Management an Competency Mapping, Financial Marketing and Investment, Product and Brand Management, Compensation Structuring. "We had a soft launch in January and we were set to start the online platform with at least 10 programmes. But when this crisis happened we decided to start off with four courses and keep adding courses along the way. We started the Re 1 campaign from April 1 and till now we have around 3,500 enrollments. We had contacted the AICTE to put our programmes up on their ELIS platform as well and they agreed," said Shabbir Akhtar, Head of the Digital Learning Initiative.
The success of the initiative has been beyond their expectation, said Shabbir. "When we were working on this project we did not think we will be able to help so many people so fast. The digital learning initiative is for those who want to enhance their skills or learn a new skill but do not want to be constrained in a brink and mortar classroom system. The online courses let you study anytime anywhere and a course generally costs Rs 3,500 which has now been slashed down to just a rupee. We will continue to provide the courses for Re 1 till the end of the lockdown," added Shabbir. He also said that the majority of the traffic is coming from the ELIS platform.
Online courses have encountered various glitches across India since the lockdown has been in place — from bad network to inability to use the softwares properly. But Shabbir assures they are having a smooth run. "We have had the online platform for regular students for years now — our faculty and students are well accustomed to it. The regular students are being taught on Google Classroom now," said Shabbir and added that the portal can also be accessed through your phone and even though it does not have an app yet, the mobile version is as good as one.
