The government’s ‘One Nation One Student ID’ platform is set to go live in February, where data from various higher education bodies will be collated under one portal. Also, a ‘peer crowdsourcing’ software is being developed under it to authenticate data furnished by educational institutions across the country, officials said.
The ‘One Nation One Student ID’ initiative is derived from the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 under which unique Aadhar-verified digital IDs will be issued to students, teachers as well as institutions from pre-primary to higher education to track the academic progress and credentials for each of the entities.
At present, the unique 12-digit identification number — Automated Permanent Academic Account Registry (APAAR) IDs initiative has been launched in the higher education system where over 20 million students are being issued the IDs. It will soon be extended to school students, teachers, and all educational institutions as well.
While the IDs have begun to be issued, the digital platform where all the information will be stored is going to go up in February, said Anil Sahasrabuddhe, chairperson, National Educational Technology Forum (NETF), a division set up under the Ministry of Education (MoE).
Data on institutions in the higher education system is maintained by various agencies including the University Grants Commission (UGC), which is a regulatory body, National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC), National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF), and National Board of Accreditation (NBA), among others.
“The first thing with the platform going live will be to validate the data collated from these different agencies. We will be asking the education bodies to do the same through the institutions that have furnished the information in the first place, which pertains to their academic and extra curricular activities, programmes offered, number of students enrolled, the placements offered, and the quality of the jobs that students have been placed in, among other crucial parameters,” he said.
This will automatically help accrediting and ranking agencies in accessing data from one source.
The bigger challenge then will be to authenticate this data for which the NETF is developing a ‘peer crowdsourcing’ software.
“Having authentic data at hand is what we wish to achieve through this exercise to be able to have a real analysis of the quality of education being imparted by the institutions and the gaps thereof. We are developing a peer crowdsourcing’ software for the same to verify the authenticity of each of the information furnished by an institution. It will involve verifying information through a questionnaire sent to multiple sets of people linked to an institution, for example, industry partners, competing institutions, and visiting faculty, among others. It is in the initial stages and may take six months to a year to be ready,” he said.
Peer crowdsourcing software will work like a scale that constantly weighs the credibility of the information shared by the institutions from time to time with the agencies to establish the highest level of transparency.
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