Introduction

National Testing Agency (NTA) has been established by GoI as a premier, autonomous and self-sustained testing organization to conduct entrance examinations for admission/fellowship in higher educationaL institutions.

To assess competence of candidates for admissions and recruitment, has always been a challenge in terms of matching with research based international standards, efficiency, transparency and error free delivery. The NTA is entrusted to address all such issues using best in every field, from test preparation, to test delivery and to test marking.

The MHRD has launched online ARPIT on 13th November, 2018, a major and unique initiative of online professional development of 15 lakhs higher education faculty using the MOOCs platform SWAYAM. In the first instance NTA conducted ARPIT Test on 30th March 2019 in 66 disciplines. Currently, 48 discipline-specific National Resource Centres (NRCs) have been identified by MHRD, wherein Course Coordinators have prepared online training material, with focus on latest developments in the discipline. ARPIT is going to be an ongoing exercise, so that every year NRCs will continuously develop new refresher module in their earmarked discipline each year and the training material will be uploaded and made available through SWAYAM.

UGC has notified equivalence of ARPIT as a refresher course for career advancement of faculty (DO Letter No. F.2-16/2002(PS) Pt.fI.II dated 3rd December 2018). During September 2019 till January 2020, second batch of 146214 ARPIT Candidates, have taken up the Online SWAYAM MOOCs Courses.