INTERVIEW with Vijay Shekar Peesapati, Country Director, MyMobileUniversity
Our programs help enhance digital literacy, learn new things or up-skill, improve one’s language and soft-skills and as result help individuals improve their livelihood and give a positive impact to their workplace, social and community circle.
By Rusen Kumar
HYDERABAD: Malaysia based LTT Global Communications has launched MyMobileUni.com, a free lifelong learning portal covering academic, lifestyle and lifelong learning programs for all. It empowers individuals of all ages in line with globalization and the need for human capital development towards a knowledge-based economy. Visitors to the site get opportunities to explore free courses and affordable courses made available by Universities, Business Schools and Organizations for the masses from all over the world. LTT Global Communications has over 10 years of learning and training experience and had come across many good websites that enhance and deliver education. As a global company, LTT Global saw an opportunity to enhance the education of all ages especially those who have little access to learning platforms of content and learning courses.
MyMobileUni.com has started its India operation and is collaborating with IndiaCSR Group to promote under Corporate Social Responsibility to various corporate houses. Vijay Shekar.peesapati, Country Director, MyMobileUniversity shares his plans and scope on how it will help the community through the site’s various learning channels.
Excerpts of an Interview:
What is the vision and mission of My Mobile University?
MyMobileUniversity’s vision and mission is to impact lives through education and help individuals improve their livelihood and give a positive impact to their workplace, social and community circle.
Kindly highlight historical backdrop of My Mobile University.
MyMobileUni.com is a global initiative to impact lives through education by LTT Global an award winning mobile and web based learning company that has been pioneering learning on the go since 2004. We are a Digital Malaysia’s education sector company to help empower individuals and organizations through digital learning platform.
The main reason for our initiative is that a large percentage of population still has little or no access to education and we decided to take action as we had over 10 years of learning and training experience and have come across many websites that enhance the delivery of education to the general population. Other compelling reasons for us to launch this initiative includes: student study debts are on the rise world-wide, rising costs of higher education, employers are in search of high caliber staff with the right skill set for employment, a recent global study by Telefonica of young adults aged between 18-30 years said access to technology and education will help to bring them out of poverty and ensure them of their success (http://survey.telefonica.com), globally students, professionals, and businesses in their pursuit of success have to remain competitive, people retrenched, unemployed, people who come out of long medical leave and people between jobs looking for better opportunity and continuing education for professionals to maintain and upgrade skills is needed in a competitive market place.
MyMobileUni.com’s platform makes it a one-stop centre to access free and quality learning content. We have links to the world’s leading Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) providers like Coursera, edX and Udacity and to other universities, organizations, NGOs’ and subject matter experts from all over the world who have content that they like to share with the world.
We have collaborated with CSR INDIA Corporate Social Services Pvt Ltd (CSR INDIA), who is also our global CSR partner as we embark together on a shared vision to impact lives through education and help make the world a better place. We are happy to say several local partners are on board and among them are Pragati (NGO), Hyderabad, who will be using this platform to up-skill youth and help them with employability, Trayi Educational Services is among our content providers and Voniz Inc. who is among our technology partners.
We are pleased to inform that we have on board with us several companies locally and globally who have come on board voluntarily to support this initiative in various ways via their skills and expertise and who all share our vision of making learning accessible and affordable and to impact lives globally together though education.
What kind of services you are offering in India?
According to Wikipedia India has more than 50% of its population below the age of 25 and more than 65% below the age of 35. And according to a recent global study by Telefonica it is said that young adults have clearly stated that technology and education will help them come out of poverty and assure them of success. Our services are available to all as long as they have an internet connected device they are able to learn to anywhere, anytime. Our services offerings namely are the Free Learning Platform and the Premium Learning Platform:
Free Learning Platform
Impacting lives through education via our FREE learning site MyMobileUni.com. Currently we have 20 channels and thousands of courses, e-books and other digital content suitable for all who want to learn, re-skill or up-skill themselves, via Universities and College programs; Entrepreneur and Business Programs; Computer Science and IT Programs inclusive of Mobile App Development Programs; Professional Courses, Soft Skills and Skills Training for Workplace; Global Health and Medicine; Programs for Teachers; Programs for Teens and Children; Worldwide Radio and News; Video Talks and Lectures; Life Skills and Lifestyle Programs covering Motivation, Music, Art and Hobbies; Education Software Tools and exciting Mobile Apps you may download and learn from your mobile devices.
Premium Learning Platform
And we also have a premium site for people who require services of a tutor, subject matter expert or get other educational resources, products and services made available at an affordable price to the MyMobileUniversity community in line with our vision to make learning accessible and affordable. Local providers also get to offer their services to a global community by using this platform.
How My Mobile University is good for students for their study purpose?
MyMobileUni.com is a platform for all ages whether they are students, employed, housewives, in business, retired; in short just anyone will find the site interactive and fun way to learn anywhere, anytime. Our programs help enhance digital literacy, learn new things or up-skill, improve one’s language and soft-skills and as result help individuals improve their livelihood and give a positive impact to their workplace, social and community circle.
We also offer other benefits to support personalized learning, for the first time everyone has an opportunity to learn because we leverage on technology, millions of people are able to access learning for free, anytime from all over the world and can now study science, engineering, humanities, etc delivered by the world’s best professors without having to pay expensive tuition or having to quit their full-time job. It benefits professionals, or people who cannot afford, or gain admittance to traditional universities, enables to optimize the mix various educational offerings irrespective of location, time, age, and provider and build professional and personal skills.
What kind of plan you have to expand My Mobile University services?
My role covers both impacting lives through education as well as to drive bringing in partners for the FREE and PREMIUM platforms to help sustain the initiatives and activities of MyMobileUniversity.
What is your view on Information Technology and the Future of Education in Indian perspective?
LTT Global has been pioneering mobile learning for the last 10 years and we believe that right now everything is falling into place.
Mobile devices and computers are priced affordably now, secondly improved infrastructure has better outreach, last but most important the mindset of people, now they are ready to learn on mobile devices those days there is a question as to whether one can learn on a mobile device, however today they are asking what can I learn?
Our way of working, shopping, playing and learning has all changed and moved to the digital era and everyone has no choice but to embrace and leverage on it to remain competitive in this global arena.
The great part of all this is that one can do it in the comfort of one’s home. One is now able to work and learn now. The other great thing is that there is no travelling required, and no need to buy books, thus no tree cutting as a result we not only make learning accessible but mobile and web learning is a go-green initiative too!
MyMobileUni.com needs the support of organizations?
We hope companies will be benefitted by supporting these initiatives through their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) budget. Under the company’s law it allows to do these type of initiatives to help society gain access to quality education and impact lives through education and training and together we can impact through the various CSR channels in MyMobileUni.com. We are also offering CSR Project Implementation in the area of youth development.
Vijay can be reached at Vijay@MyMobileUni.com.
