Under the partnership, IBM will catalogue its 30-plus Open P-TECH courses on Eskill India Portal, with more than 60 hours of learning, as a knowledge partner.

Technology major IBM on Friday (August 21) announced its collaboration with National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) to offer ‘Open P-TECH’, a free digital education platform, focused on emerging technologies and professional development skills.

As a part of the collaboration, IBM will curate online courses from Open P-TECH platform and offer it to users via NSDC’s eSkill India portal to ensure that Indian youth have relevant skills.

The open P-TECH (Pathways to Technology Early College High School) platform was launched in India in March 2020 to equip young learners and educators with foundational technology competencies and emerging areas of technology.

Manoj Balachandran, Leader, CSR, IBM India/South Asia said that there are 9,000 learners and worldwide there are 44,000 learners under open P-Tech.

As a concept, P-Tech was first launched by IBM in 2011 in Brooklyn as a brick-and-mortar model. Balachandran said that the open P-Tech was to ensure that these learning modules have a wider reach.

Sandip Patel, MD, IBM India/South Asia said that skill gap is a reality in India. He added that data shows that there will be a 29 million skill deficit by 2030.

“The future is new collar jobs where individuals don’t have formal degrees but have the skills that are enabling them to be relevant to the job role. I am of the view that emerging technologies must be a part of student curriculum,” added Patel.

Patel also said that the content is currently available in English and will be further expanded into Hindi and 10 other Indian languages including Kannada, Telugu, Tamil, Punjabi, Gujarati, Sindhi, Urdu, Bengali. Soft skills will also be included and also gamified assessment, he added.

Under the partnership, IBM will catalogue its 30 plus Open P-TECH courses on eSkill India portal, with more than 60 hours of learning, as a knowledge partner. eSkill India is a digital skilling initiative from NSDC that aggregates digital learning resources through various Indian and global knowledge partnerships, to enable access to best-in-class learning resources for the India youth. Currently, over 1.6 million minutes of digital courses and content is available across various sectors in multiple languages.

IBM will provide online courses in emerging technologies like cyber security, blockchain, AI and machine learning, cloud, Internet of Things (IoT), along with professional skills, like design thinking to learners between 18 to 22 years for free.

Manish Kumar, MD and CEO, National Skill Development Corporation said that technology is relevant to India’s future.

“Online trainings through digital platforms like Open P-TECH and eSkill India need to be accelerated to overcome geographical and socio-economic barriers. Digital learning will enable higher participation of women in the labour workforce as the scope for employability will increase.,” he added.

Kumar added that IT was among the sectors with lowest wage gap between men and women at 12 percent. This was in contrast to almost 30-35 percent in other sectors.

Under the partnership, Open P-TECH platform will offer courses to  develop soft skills, interpersonal skills, problem solving which is amongst a set of 11 key skills which are generally not available in a college curriculum, but are  high in demand and are valued in the job market.
In India, previously, IBM had partnered with Directorate General of Training at the Ministry of Skill Development & Entrepreneurship, Central Board of Secondary Education, Niti Aayog and State Department of Education, and State Skills Missions to impact more than 400,000 lakh learners and students across 22+ states through its education and skilling initiatives.

https://www.moneycontrol.com/news/business/economy/ibm-partners-with-nsdc-to-offer-free-digital-education-platform-to-students-5737481.html