Bengaluru, Sep 6 (IANS): To better prepare students for their professional life, a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was linked on Tuesday between Karnataka State Higher Education Council (SHEC), Visvesvaraiah Technical University, all the public universities of the state and IT pioneer Infosys.

The MoU was signed in presence of Higher Education Minister, C.N. Ashwath Narayan at Vidhana Soudha.

Gopala Krishna Joshi, Executive Director, SHECA and Tirumala Aarohi of Infosys exchanged the MoU.

All the Vice Chancellors of 24 Public Universities including Bengaluru, Mangaluru, Mysore who were present also later involved in exchange the copies of MoU.

Speaking on the occasion, Narayan said: "The Infosys Springboard platform developed by using modern technology has 12,300 courses to offer at free of cost. These can be used by students starting from class 6 up to those who are pursuing Ph.D and can be learnt online. In addition, this will also provide the eminence of more than 800 educational experts to the students and faculty of the Higher Education and also to the faculty".

For this purpose, Infosys has spent Rs 100 crore he stated and lauded the company for the same.

The courses on the Springboard will help Universities to update their syllabus.

This also enables to import better teaching techniques to the faculty, the Minister opined.

Further, he emphasised that Colleges and Universities should include the experts involved in developing the Springboard platform in their board of studies.

The platform will enable to teach emerging and digital skills for students. This allows to conduct virtual classes and also to evaluate students online, Narayan explained.

The platform allows faculty to open their micro-sites on behalf of their institutions.

Tirumala Aarohi, Head, Education and Training, Infosys, said: "Relevant training will be given to the faculty by knowing the needs through the Springboard. He added that an annual plan will be developed for this purpose. This will help to prepare our faculty as per global standards."

The platform which focuses on students between 10 to 22 years has set a goal to teach digital and life skills for 1 crore students by 2025.

At present 23 lakh students have been using the platform which is being available in other Indian languages also, he told.