The COVID-19 pandemic has struck the education industry globally by driving students and teachers alike to the safety of indoors in pursuit of containing the virus. In India, the 21-day lock-down, announced by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi on 24th March 2020, has brought the whole industry to a standstill. In response to the ongoing crisis, various stakeholders have decided to provide educational material free of charge to encourage learning and social distancing.

On March 12, Coursera, a popular online learning platform, launched a ‘global effort’ to aid the universities impacted by COVID-19 pandemic through the ‘Coursera for Campus’ program. This program enables enrolled students of an impacted university to access a catalog of more than 3800 courses and 400 specializations free of charge CBS has enrolled itself for these courses offered. A notification of the same has been mailed to all students. Institutions that sign up for Coursera for Campus will have the access till 31st July 2020 and their students who enroll on or before July 31 will be able to access the courses till 31st September 2020. Furthermore, many of Coursera’s previously premium resources were issued gratis through 31st May 2020.

Oracle announced that they are offering free access to online certification courses that cover Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and Oracle Autonomous Database. The program commenced on 30th March 2020 and will continue until 15th May 2020 and will have quick and easy access to more than 50 hours of online training and 6 certification exams. To encourage reading during the 21-day lock-down, The Ministry of Human Resource’s National Book Trust has made over 100 e-books freely accessible on their official website. Companies like Bharti Airtel and Amazon also joined in this movement by making a wide array of e-books/audio-books in the libraries of their respective online platforms –Juggernaut Books and Audible – accessible gratis to their subscribers. Besides the general academic material, these apps provide an assortment of select digital novels across various genres.

Efforts have been made by the educational institutions, government organizations and private companies to promote learning via online media. Even though the traditional classroom studying cannot be replaced by the alternative available online, during this time of crisis, availing the benefit of resources accessible free of cost will enable students to add value to their long-term professional goals and career aspirations.