Tamil Virtual Academy, formerly known as the Tamil Virtual University, is a

distance education Distance education, also known as distance learning, is the education of students who may not always be physically present at school, or where the learner and the teacher are separated in both time and distance; today, it usually involves online ...

institution based in

Chennai Chennai, also known as Madras (List of renamed places in India#Tamil Nadu, its official name until 1996), is the capital city, capital and List of cities in Tamil Nadu by population, largest city of Tamil Nadu, the southernmost states and ...

Tamil Nadu Tamil Nadu (; , TN) is the southernmost States and union territories of India, state of India. The List of states and union territories of India by area, tenth largest Indian state by area and the List of states and union territories of Indi ...

, India. The

Government of Tamil Nadu The Government of Tamil Nadu () is the administrative body responsible for the governance of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Chennai is the capital of the state and houses the state executive, legislature and head of judiciary. Under the Const ...

established the Tamil Virtual University on 17 February 2001 as a society. The announcement was made at the closing ceremony of the Second Tamil Internet Conference in 1999 by M. Karunanidhi. The university provides internet-based educational resources and opportunities for the

Tamil diaspora The Tamil diaspora refers to descendants of the Tamil people, Tamil speaking Emigration, immigrants who emigrated from their native lands in the southern Indian subcontinent (Tamil Nadu, Puducherry (union territory), Puducherry and Sri Lanka) to ...

as well as for others interested in learning the

Tamil language Tamil (, , , also written as ''Tamizhil'' according to linguistic pronunciation) is a Dravidian language natively spoken by the Tamil people of South Asia. It is one of the longest-surviving classical languages in the world,. "Tamil is one of ...

and acquiring knowledge of the history, art, literature and culture of the

Tamils The Tamils ( ), also known by their endonym Tamilar, are a Dravidian peoples, Dravidian ethnic group who natively speak the Tamil language and trace their ancestry mainly to the southern part of the Indian subcontinent. The Tamil language is o ...

. Tamil Virtual Academy offers certificate courses at three levels (Basic, Intermediate and Advance) and B.A. programme in Tamil. The postgraduate programme M.A. (Tamil) has been approved by Tamil University, Tanjore.

Digital library

The

digital library A digital library (also called an online library, an internet library, a digital repository, a library without walls, or a digital collection) is an online database of digital resources that can include text, still images, audio, video, digital ...

of TVU provides literature, glossaries and dictionaries. It accommodates literature starting from Sangam era to the present day, with the following features: * Classified sections of books. * Nigandu, Agarāthi * Ancient and medieval literature, with their commentaries. * Romanized versions of Tolkappiyam, Patthuppaattu and Ettutthogai. The library has subject-indexing and search facilities.

References

External links

*
TVA Digital Library
{{Education in Tamil Nadu Tamil computing Tamil-language literature Dravidian studies Distance education institutions based in India Colleges in Tamil Nadu Educational institutions established in 2001 2001 establishments in Tamil Nadu