Now pursue a TISS Secular Ethics course on your cellphone

Last Independence Day, Tata Institute of Social Sciences launched their Secular Ethics course, with His Holiness the Dalai Lama giving the inaugural lecture. On the Republic Day, the mother institute of social work is launching the course – called SE101 - for students on mobile phones.

Giving his blessings to the course, HH the Dalai Lama said, “With the realisation of one's own potential and self-confidence in one's ability, one can build a better world” and added, “We face a lot of problems due to emphasis on secondary level of differences of such as nationality, race, family background and religious faiths. But at the fundamental level we are all the same human being."

The unique course on Secular Ethics launched last year by TISS consists of five broad units, namely sourcing my universal values; designing change based on universal values and secular ethics; leading with others; accountability and responsibility; and ethical leadership. At that time, Prof S Parasuraman (Director, Tata Institute of Social Sciences) had said: “We want to extend the course to educational institutes across the country. We've invited vice-chancellors of universities, principals of colleges and schools for the lectures. The aim is to take the course forward to as many institutes in the country as possible”. Further, he said, “In the form of massive open online courses (MOOCs), lectures will be imparted to students in other institutes in the digital format”.

In line with the above, TISS is launching this novel digital course SE101, for students on their mobile phone. For this, TISS has tied up with Parrot Solutions to deliver a simple, user-friendly, interactive course through a mobile app. By keeping in mind this generations dependence on smart phones TISS has chosen to make a real difference by not only developing unique content but also taking learning directly to the students, wherever they are.

TISS and Parrot solutions will continue to leverage using the mobile-app to continuously deliver more such courses, in novel trending and interesting ways. The course content will be video-led (both live and recorded), supported by documents, chat and interactions, all of which can happen anywhere, at any time, and on-the-go, on their mobiles (even on 2G data networks). Students can now register, learn and interact using the mobile app over a period of weeks, following which a 'certificate of accomplishment' will be awarded by TISS.

TISS is an institution of excellence in higher education that continually responds to the changing social realities through the development and application of knowledge through its teaching programmes, research and advocacy initiatives. It seeks to promote and protect the dignity, equality and social justice for all, and aims at facilitating the development of committed and competent professionals for research, teaching and practice, undertaking research, developing and disseminating knowledge, as well as reaching out to the community at the local, national and international level. Parrot Solutions an innovative technology service provider and provides various services, inter-alia, technology platform (design, development and execution) to ‘massify’ content (teaching/learning) and delivery (virtual/digital) tracking, assessment and certification including requisite management support, to enable maximum number of people secure certification and keep these audiences engaged in developing and supporting further initiatives in promoting and popularising the learnings.