A program backed by the Indian government ‘Swayam’ is currently providing free computer science courses on leading technologies such as digital currency, Bitcoin, and blockchain technology. The interactive course is of 12 weeks and free. Applicants seeking to learn these emerging technologies can register for free and start learning from scratch.
About Swayam Program:
The Swayam program was initially developed by the Ministry of Human Resources Development of India. Swayam (Study Webs of Active Learning for Young Course) was launched in August 2018. The initiative aims to offer one integrated platform system and website for online courses. The program gets support from the Indian government. The government wants to reduce the digital gap of students, especially those who don’t know more about the digital systems and failed to receive basic knowledge of the mainstream economy.
Swayam successfully managed to offer more than 800 courses, and currently, the website lists more than 1550 MOOC’s courses. Further, it is seeking to present 2000 courses and 80000 hours of learning documents within 2 years span. It wants to cover courses related to school, post-graduate, undergraduate, law, engineering, and other professional oriented courses.
Swayam’s Computer Science Course Details and Topics:
The free 12 weeks online course is named as ‘Blockchain Architecture Design and Use Cases.’ The online course will commence from July 29, 2019, and ends on 18th October 2019. Applicants who want a certificate after completing the course needs take up an exam, which is scheduled on November 17, 2019. The certificate is by All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) authorized by the Faculty Development Programme (FDP) course.
Earlier Swayam successfully carried examinations on the courses offered, and they were mostly held in places namely Kolkata, Mumbai, Lucknow, Thane, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Thiruvananthapuram, Guwahati, and Chennai.
Swayam mentions:
The course is free to enroll and learn from. But if you want a certificate, you have to register and write the proctored exam conducted by us in person at any of the designated exam centers.
The applicants can take the certification exam by paying Rs. 1000. The exam will be held across India and detailed like date and place will be noted at the time of signing up.
Course Topics:
Blockchain Architecture Design and Use Cases aims to cover both the conceptual and application areas of blockchain technology. In the first week, the course teaches ‘Basic Crypto Primitives ‘ and ‘Introduction to Blockchain’ mostly includes fundamentals, architecture, history, and imagination. In the second week, students will learn about Basic Crypto Primitives and include bitcoin basics and ‘Distributed Consensus’.
The course emphasizes more on code and computer science ideas. Lectures on Bitcoin basic will give a detail view of Bitcoin, includes restricted economics and the way the digital currency competes with the central banks of the world.
Third-week deals with ‘Consensus in Bitcoin’ the fundamentals of proof-of-work and miner’s role. Applicants will even learn about authorized blockchains, and class will continue for another week. The last two weeks 5th and 6th respectively deal with Hyperledger.
Syllabus of the Course:
The curriculum includes IBM Blockchain Cloud, Hyperledger, Ethereum development tools, and Quorum. Books considered for the course by Swayam includes ‘Mastering Bitcoin: Unlocking Digital Cryptocurrencies” written by Andreas Antonopoulos, ‘Blockchain’ by Melanie Swan and others.
Course Faculties:
Professor Sandip Chakraborty and Dr. Praveen Jayachandran will be two faculties for the course. Prof. Sandip is an assistant professor working at IIT Kharagpur, and the other is a researcher and Indian Blockchain and Smart Contracts team’s manager at IBM Research.
