The Semi-Finalists: Manipal Global Education's EduNxt Project

This e-learning platform serves as a virtual environment that simulates the campus of a university. No wonder then that more than 2L+ students and 6K+ faculty members are accessing it for distance learning

The current proportion of students in distance education in India is about 30% and is expected to grow up to 40% in next few years. To tap this very growth, a number of universities are coming up with innovative ideas. Not only private universities, but even government ones are taking steps to increase the Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) to 30 from the present 18 by 2020. Manipal Global Education has implemented a comprehensive e-learning platform for distance learning for both students and teachers. It has strong social and collaborative features that enable students and teachers to interact with one another and participate in shared learning.

The Implementation

It provides a complete academic facilitation system with community and collaborative features like an alumni portal, wikis, forums, blogs, and a host of other features. Students have access to multiple resources such as self learning material, powerpoint slides, multiple choice questions, model question papers for study and preparation for the examination. They are even provided with online chat schedules and have access to archived recorded sessions for study and exam preparation. Moreover, the solution enables students to regularly post their queries related to their study materials, exam preparation and get in touch with their respective faculty members for coaching and guidance. They can even collaborate with each other while preparing for assignments, projects and exams. They're also enrolled into the Alumni Portal and interact with each other after graduating. For the faculty, there are training programmes on EduNXt and online testing for faculty certification.

Technology Used

EduNxt has been developed by an in-house team of 35 people using mostly open source technologies like PHP scripting language, Drupal Framework, Propel ORM, MySQL Database, and Java programming language. It's a fairly complex setup that uses around 30 different software components, and extensive hardware that includes Blade Servers, virtualization technology, SAN, apart from the usual firewalls, LAN switches, file and backup servers.

The End Result

This system is being used at 47 Learning Centers. So far, around 2,000 faculty members have been trained on this system. Around 2 Lakh students and 6,000 faculty members are enrolled on it. It's actively being used for query resolution, with 80% of queries getting resolved within 48 hours. Moreover, EduNxt has maintained a healthy 40% active usage rate across students in learning centers.