Bhubaneswar: The Odisha Higher Education Department on Saturday signed Memoranda of Understanding (MoUs) with CSRBOX, Nandi Foundation and Odisha Knowledge Corporation Limited (OKCL) to strengthen skill development, artificial intelligence (AI) education, employability and entrepreneurship among students and faculty members across the State.
In collaboration with NASSCOM, the department also launched the ‘AI Course for All’ programme, aimed at providing students pursuing higher education and working faculty members with opportunities to acquire skills in artificial intelligence through online courses.
Under the MoU with IBM-CSRBOX, more than 1.25 lakh students across Odisha will be covered under a skill development programme. Students from Arts, Science and Commerce streams will receive training through online courses, workshops and project-based learning in areas such as AI, digital literacy, enterprise design thinking and project management.
Special emphasis will be placed on students of 107 higher education institutions located in remote and aspirational districts of the State. The programme will also focus on strengthening AI-related skills among faculty members.
The MoU with Nandi Foundation will provide offline training to final-year girl students pursuing undergraduate and postgraduate programmes. The training will cover financial literacy, critical thinking, public speaking and communication skills, with the objective of improving students’ preparedness for employment opportunities.
Under the agreement with OKCL, students will receive 30 hours of English-language training and 10 hours of AI training through digital mode. Teachers will also be provided with five hours of AI orientation training.
Meanwhile, the ‘AI Course for All’ programme, launched in collaboration with NASSCOM, is expected to benefit more than one lakh higher education students across the State. The initiative will provide online AI courses to students as well as working faculty members.
The department has also partnered with the Entrepreneurship Development Institute of India (EDII), Ahmedabad, to strengthen the entrepreneurship ecosystem in higher education institutions. Under the Faculty Mentor Development Programme, 40 faculty members from Odisha will undergo six days of training at EDII.
The training programme will cover entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship training capabilities, mentoring, enterprise development tools and the institutional entrepreneurship ecosystem. The initiative is aimed at enhancing the capacity of faculty members to mentor students and promote entrepreneurship and startup activities in higher education institutions.
In another major initiative, the Academic Performance Audit for Higher Education Institutions and Faculty, undertaken by the Higher Education Department and the Odisha State Higher Education Council, was launched to assess academic performance across higher education institutions in the State.
The audit will assess institutions on the basis of 52 Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), grouped under four broad pillars—Student, Faculty, Infrastructure and Activities.
The ‘Question Bank Portal’, developed in line with the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, was also launched. The portal will follow a two-tier mechanism to help maintain the quality of question papers and facilitate their preparation in accordance with the National Credit Framework.
The initiatives are aimed at improving employability and digital skills among students, strengthening faculty capacity, and creating a more robust ecosystem for artificial intelligence, entrepreneurship and academic quality in Odisha’s higher education sector.
