IIT-KGP adopts AWS Edu to teach cloud computing

Kolkata: IIT Kharagpur (IIT-KGP), one of the premier technology institutes in the country, on Friday joined hundreds of thousands of students, over 10,000 educators, and more than 1,500 institutions worldwide who are members of AWS Educate.

IIT-KGP will now adopt Amazon Web Services (AWS) Educate, a programme designed to help students gain in-demand cloud computing skills, including artificial intelligence (AI) hands-on experience, and other competencies from the world's most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud services provider. The AWS Educate programme is Amazon's global initiative to provide students and educators with the resources needed to accelerate cloud-related learning and to help power the workforce of tomorrow. The programme offers a robust set of no-cost tools, resources, and AWS Promotional Credits for students and educators to boost their cloud skills and experience.

"AWS Educate is designed to upskill students with the latest advancements in cloud computing technology and provide them with an environment to experiment on AWS Cloud, without worrying about cost or access challenges. We are pleased to work with IIT Kharagpur in their journey of higher learning, and to help them nurture new talent for a cloud-ready workforce," said Rahul Sharma, President- Public Sector, Amazon Internet Services.

As part of AWS Educate, the students will gain access to 12 Cloud Career Pathways covering topics that are in demand by employers, such as machine learning, cybersecurity, and software development, each with over 30 hours of content. The Cloud Career Pathway framework enables students to put their cloud knowledge to use across 12 self-paced pathways aligned to labor market trends and workforce needs. These include popular pathways such as Cloud Computing 101, Cloud Support Engineer, Data Integration Specialist, and Machine Learning Scientist, among others. Each pathway includes instructional content, assessments, and a final project. Upon completion, learners are eligible to receive an AWS Educate Certificate of Completion or an AWS Educate Badge.

"We are happy to introduce AWS Educate programme to provide AWS Cloud Computing experience and AI-enablement for all our students, irrespective of their branch of study. We look forward to some really innovative solution ideas coming out of this," said Prof. P P Chakrabarti, Director, IIT Kharagpur.

With AWS Educate, IIT Kharagpur students can now gain access to educational resources that can help them in their thesis and research projects, as well as course assignments.

"Learning at IIT Kharagpur has evolved beyond classrooms and laboratories. Students are now in 24x7 learning mode with peers and co-curricular projects, and this requires educational resources which can be accessed and stored at any time. Customized courses will further help the students with in-depth studies in their areas of interests, and share resource materials with their peers," said Prof Sudeshna Sarkar, head, dept. of computer science and engineering and Centre for Artificial Intelligence at IIT Kharagpur.