<p>IIT Bombay hosted an award ceremony to honour the best performers of the Spoken Tutorial project on March 4, 2023 Around 140 people received the awards under two broad categories, namely, MASTER (Most Accomplished Spoken Tutorial Educator Resource), and Spoken Tutorial Alumni Resource (STAR). The event was attended by Heads of the institutions, industry leaders, bureaucrats, decision makers, in addition to the awardees.</p><p>Spoken Tutorial is a flagship IT literacy program developed at IIT Bombay and established with the generous funding from the Ministry of Education (then MHRD) through NMEICT in the year 2009.&nbsp;</p><p>Over the span of 13 years, the project has trained 70+ lakh learners across India, covering all states and union territories, with over 150 state affiliating universities, and 5000+ Colleges using this programme. The Spoken Tutorial project offers more than 90 skill-based IT Literacy courses ranging from basic computer skills, programming languages, domain specific free/libre open source software,&nbsp; numerical computational tool, etc, many of which are also available in 22 Indian languages as per Schedule VIII of the Indian constitution. Many colleges across India have adopted Spoken Tutorial skill oriented courses as part of their curriculum.</p><p>Using Spoken Tutorials, one can learn various Free and Open Source Software all by themselves.&nbsp; The self-paced, multilingual features of the project ensure that anybody with a computer and a desire for learning can learn by themselves from any place, at any time, and in a language of their choice.</p><p>Mr. Yogesh Andlay, Co-founder of Nucleus Software, and INSquare, was the Chief Guest. He delivered the keynote address on the ‘Role of Education in Nation Building’. During his speech, he encouraged all the awardees to contribute to the society by becoming leaders in their own right. Ms. Ashima Mittal, IAS (C.E.O. Nashik Zilla Parishad &amp; IIT Bombay Alumnus) was the guest of honour. She was also the recipient of the MASTER award, as she volunteered to promote Spoken Tutorials during her second year of B.Tech studies at IIT Bombay, back in 2011. She now organises a major training programme for the health workers in Nashik district using the Health Spoken Tutorials.&nbsp;</p><p>The event also had a panel discussion on ‘Making India a talent powerhouse - The Spoken Tutorial Way’. The panel included representatives from academia and industry and discussed the way forward for upskilling the Indian population.&nbsp;</p><p>Speaking about the event, Prof. Kannan Moudgalya, the Principal Investigator of Spoken Tutorials said, "We started Spoken Tutorial with an intention to take high quality education to India's rural population. We worked tirelessly to build IT literacy modules which would be both low cost and suitable for self-learning. When these awardees spoke about how Spoken Tutorials helped them in their academic performances and in finding jobs, it was an extremely gratifying experience ".</p>