Education, Careers & Professional News
CS course to go online from 2007
CS course to go online from 2007
To make the Company Secretary (CS) course widely accessible it will be offered online from next year. Currently, the course is offered through classroom teaching and via post. Once the course is webbased, students can access the course at their desktops at their own convenience, said N K Jain, secretary and chief executive officer, Institute of Company Secretaries of India (ICSI). The institute has started providing the study materi¬al on CD.
While elaborating on the courses elearning model, Jain said: Students can attend classes at com¬puter centres, interact live with faculty in a virtual classroom and listen to lectures online.
Plans are to start the programme by early next year. In the first phase, the institute will offer the foundation course. On successful implementation, the intermediate course will be launched followed by the final year programme in the third phase.
Apart from the online CS programme, ICSI has signed an agreement with NUT to offer a course called Understanding Information Technology in Corporate Environment.1 According to Jain, the course will train students and members of ICSI on highend personal computing skills.The course will build IT capacities of students, which is requi¬red in the field of e-governance today, he said.
Those students who have registered or are registering for the intermediate course on or after May 2006, will be required to undertake the 70-hour computer training course. Its compulsory for them. Only those students who successfully complete the computer course, will be eligible for the CS exams in 2007, he added.
The computer course will cover areas like IT laws and security, ecommerce, digital signatures and existing
privacy protection. The course fee is Rs 3,000 for general category students and Rs 2,500 for SC/ST students. The course will be available at various NUT centres across India. We will start registrations and the course from December, said Jain.
Besides, ICSI has recently launched its post-membership qualification (PMQ) course in corporate governance for members of the institute. This course is benchmarked against the syllabi of noted institutes/universities from other countries. The course will keep members updated on frameworks and developments in corporate gover¬nance that are globally valid. Registr¬ation for the course will start from January 1,2007, he added.