• The proposal for creating and running a course is to be submitted by one or more faculty or subject matter experts (SMEs) through a portal. A deadline will be announced for consideration of the proposal.
• The submitted proposal will be taken up for review by an expert review committee constituted for that purpose.
• The committee may directly select the proposal or provide feedback and findings to the faculty/SME after review.
• The faculty/SME will have to incorporate responses to the review comments of the committee before a specified deadline.
• The expert review committee’s decision will be deemed final for resolving any conflict that may arise. Completed courses and feedback from them will also be made available to the expert review committee for their perusal.
• A portal for submitting and reviewing course proposals will be created for this purpose. A considerable portion of the review process is expected to be done online on the portal.

The courses are expected to be offered as MOOCs on a suitable portal. The delivery of courses is expected to be as follows:

• Courses will be aligned to the typical college semester i.e. one set of courses will start in July and another set in January. This helps students to register for the course through their college and benefit from local mentoring.
• There would be a pre-defined start and end date for the course.
• The course schedule would be published before the start of the course and will have to be adhered by all SMEs and all the participants.
• The course will consist of videos and assignments. Supplementary reading material may be provided by the SMEs. Requirement of specific text books will not be allowed (even if they were authored by the SMEs) , however use /suggestion that they may be used as supplements will be permitted.
• The contents and the videos must be prepared to adhere to the current copyrights policy as well as those that MHRD stipulates from time to time.
• Active conduct of the course will have to be done by the faculty and TAs by clarifying doubts of the enrolled students through the online discussion forum.

• At the end of the open online course, enrolled students have the option of registering for a proctored exam in centres across the country. This exam is to be coordinated by all concerned institutes for financial viability. A nominal charge for covering the cost of the exam is collected from the student at this stage.
• Students who register for the proctored exam, attend it, and meet eligibility criteria will receive a certificate. The certificate for the course will be from the Institute of the faculty/SME offering the course.
  1. The course will have to be registered with the respective CCE (Centre for Continuing Education) of that institute (the IITs / IISc) under an online course delivery model IIT Madras has examples that can be provided.
  2. The process of the respective CCE and the institute will have to be followed with respect to overheads and certificate signatories.
• The physical certificates will be printed, laminated and dispatched to the students.
• If there are industry partners for the course, the certificate will have provision to have the partner details displayed.
• The certificates and score are expected to be used for credit transfer and for improving career prospects.