1. CATEGORIES:
Higher Education – Best Innovation in Open and Distance Learning
NAME OF THE PROJECT/INITIATIVE:
myonlinevarsity.com
APPLICANT DETAILS:
Swaminathan K, C.E.O.
Think Big Edu-Venture (India) Pvt. Ltd,
Old. No. 146/2, New No. 48, Habibullah Road,
T. Nagar, Chennai 600 017.
DETAILS OF PROJECT/INITIATIVE IMPLEMENTING AGENCY:
Think Big Edu-Venture (India) Pvt. Ltd,
Old. No. 146/2, New No. 48, Habibullah Road,
T. Nagar, Chennai 600 017.

2. DETAILS OF THE PROGRAMME/PROJECT/INITIATIVE
Brief description of the programme/project/initiative
Life does not stop after College...why should Learning?
When a group of thought leaders in both academics and business started pondering
this seemingly surreal question, the result was the formation of ThinkBig Edu
Venture, a company focused on blazing a new trail in Distance Education, and
myonlinevarsity.com is the first offering from this group.
myonlinevarsity.com is a Social Learning portal conceived to bring the best
educators and subject matter experts to a global student base pursuing Management
Studies in the Distance Education mode.
Why was the project started
While the goals of Distance Education are well understood and laudable, it always
had a stigma attached to it when it came to quality, curricula and academic rigor. It
never was viewed on par with brick-and-mortar classroom based education; not by
the students or by their prospective employers. However, thanks to the rapid
proliferation and adoption of Internet and Social media in India, we now have a
mechanism to make Distance Education realize its full potential and make a serious
contribution to creating a whole new generation of highly skilled knowledge
workers.
Recent studies have shown that despite India’s increased contribution to the global
economy, its Managerial skills are inadequate and ill-equipped to flourish in a highly
competitive knowledge economy. How then do we scale the Managerial talent pool
to the projected 20 million in 5 years? Not by opening up more traditional
institutions but through a robust Distance Education curriculum and delivery
model.
myonlinevarsity.com is thus the culmination of market needs, advances in
broadband technology, and cost-effective infrastructure.

3. Objective
Our vision is to empower and facilitate a global student base to learn from the very
best educators and institutions regardless of subject matter, location and time. We
believe this transformational delivery model of high quality education will foster
new avenues of learning and lifelong skill development for the knowledge
workforce.
Target Group – The initial group are professionals who aspire to earn a
Management degree/diploma but are unable to because of family and work
commitments. Plan is to subsequently launch social learning portals targeted at IT,
Vocational Training and more.
Geographical reach - Theoretically there are no limits. But because of our focus on
partnering with Indian Business schools, there is an implicit bias towards India.
Date from which the project became operational - Jan 2011
Is the project still operational - Yes
10 points that make the programme/project innovative?
1. Distance Education always meant learning in isolation. But not anymore! Our
social learning platform is designed to maximize interaction, communication
and collaboration with fellow students and instructors alike. This reduces
drop-out rates and dramatically increases the chance to successfully
complete the education.
2. Our curricula are jointly designed by leading academicians and global
companies, thus speeding the transition from academic learning to on-the-
job performance.
3. Our faculty members delivering the video and audio lectures have been
recruited from premium institutions like IIM, IIT and other leading B-schools.
The best teachers are now available to everyone regardless of time and
distance.
4. Our mission is to provide quality, affordable education to all. To this end, we
have pioneered a ‘Freemium’ model to monetize. This is no different than the
Open Source revolution that has changed the software industry forever. In
myonlinevarsity.com, basic content such as voice-enabled PPTs, digital
library access, interaction with the student community is perpetually FREE.
We charge only for premium content such as video lectures and live
classroom. We are democratizing higher education!
5. Through partnerships with preeminent institutions, we provide our students
with academic choices to pursue specializations and programs which interest
and intrigue them.

4. 6. Based on a proprietary pedagogy, the subjects have been broken down into
small learning units with quizzes to reinforce the learning. Features such as
Chat, Discussion forums, and Email allow the students to get help when
needed. In our world, no student is left behind!
7. Our leading edge Social Learning platform with live video streaming and
social interaction features provides a conventional classroom like
environment with all the convenience and flexibility of a Distance Education
program.
8. Designed to support multiple access environments from a PC to mobile
gadgets such as Smart phones and Tablets, we provide a flexible and
convenient learning mechanism to match the students’ busy schedule. A
student can even listen to the audio portion of the lectures through any basic
web enabled phone; it is just that simple and convenient!
9. Specially designed Data Center to address high availability, scaling and
performance for 24x7 Learning
10. Customize content to match specific domains and corporate needs.
Curriculum gets a practical, real-world slant through this approach thereby
reducing the need for on-the-job training and have partnered with numerous
Recruitment agencies that will provide Placement assistance to help realize
the career goals of our graduating students.
List the 5 achievements of the programme/project?
 Convinced the best educators of our vision, and got them to contribute to
the content.
 Our early adopting students’ approval of the pedagogy, content and the
overall learning experience.
 Scalable infrastructure guaranteeing availability and accessibility to Tier 2
and Tier 3 cities even from a data card.
 Major universities signing up as Education Partners to certify and confer
degrees and diplomas to our students.
 Evoking interest amongst Corporates to use our programs as part of an
overall Employee retention strategy
List the 5 key challenges faced while implementing the
programme/project/initiative and how they were overcome?
1. Adoption by students of a web enabled Distance education program in India
was unproven. By involving students, faculty and the Technology team
throughout the roll out process we were able to iteratively refine the overall
end user experience. This collective design approach gave us the confidence
to roll this out to a larger student base.
2. Identifying and convincing faculty from prominent B schools to deliver
lectures at our Chennai studio was a logistic nightmare. But our Content
team pulled it off masterfully through some creative scheduling and precise
planning.

5. 3. Designing a comprehensive curricula complying with the syllabus of
multiple universities was no easy task. Required meticulous construction
and assembly of the learning units to ensure continuity and flow.
4. Our streaming video content required a scalable data infrastructure to
guarantee minimal “data buffering”. We had to identify a India-based data
center team (video is best served if the servers are located close to the end
user geography) and work with them to custom build an infrastructure to
support this need.
5. Getting the world to know of our existence in a cost effective manner. This
was accomplished through extensive use of Social media, online
communities and other viral marketing techniques.
List the 5 points how can the programme serve as a model that can be
replicated or adapted by others?
 Involve all stakeholders – students, faculty, and technology team
throughout the implementation and rollout process
 Never compromise on the quality of faculty as that is a core value of any
ICT enabled Distance education program
 Design a FREEmium business model. This will require giving away some
basic product/service for FREE to everyone and monetize a few through
advanced services
 Offer Live online classes and collaborative projects to simulate a real
world classroom atmosphere
List 5 points to elaborate on the scalabilty of the programme / project /
initiative
 Plan to extend the offerings to cover other domains such as Healthcare,
Finance, and Information Technology. This will pretty much cover all the key
areas of the knowledge economy
 Content creation is time consuming in addition to being expensive. Plan to
involve the community to create, share and monetize content.
 Repackage existing content into various short term Certificate program to
reach a wider audience. Ex: Content from several Marketing subjects can be
quickly repackaged into a Contemporary Marketing certificate program.
 With global accessibility to the platform, international students can easily
get trained, certified and educated.
 Though our current focus is Higher Education, the platform can be used to
cater to K through 12 students