AICTE's study material to be accessible overseas, Council adopts Creative Common Licences

The All India Council for Technical Education has adopted the Creative Commons Licence which will help make its study material easily accessible for both Indian as well as overseas students.

A Creative Commons License is one of several public copyright licenses that enables free distribution of an otherwise copyrighted "work". It is used when an author wants to give other people the right to share, use, and build upon a work that he/she has created.

The license has been adopted in alignment with the UNESCO resolution of November 25, 2019 (Paris, France), on Open Educational Resources (OER).

"This also makes the AICTE study material now Open Educational Resources compliant, which not only respects the intellectual property rights of the copyright owner but also provides permissions granting the public the rights to access, re-use, re-purpose, adapt and redistribute educational materials," AICTE Chairman TG Sitharam said in a statement.

"Presently, the license has been adopted for second year books uploaded in e-Kumbh portal in English as well as other Indian Languages. In future, the remaining books of second year and books of third and fourth year, in English as well as 12 other Indian Languages will also be released under the license," he added.

Sitharam said the move will enable millions of the Indian and overseas students to access the quality material developed by AICTE for their study and classroom teaching. "It will allow others to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format, remix, transform and build upon the material for any non-commercial purpose," the chairman said.

The AICTE had initiated technical book writing scheme in 2021, in alignment with the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, to provide engineering course material in 12 different Indian Languages – Hindi, Odia, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Punjabi, Bengali, Marathi, Gujarati, Assamese, Urdu and Malayalam.

The AICTE had started original book writing in English for the first year and then its translation in 12 Indian languages, post original writing, according to its model curriculum and outcome-based education model.