Virtual varsities will hasten learning: Experts

By agencies   |   Tuesday, 09 August 2005, 19:30 IST
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HYDERABAD: By taking a major chunk of learning on to the electronic mode through virtual universities, it will be possible to reach out education across the country bypassing infrastructure bottlenecks, experts at a national meet on eLearning opined. The Vice-Chancellor of Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU), H.P. Dikshit, said India is faced with the challenge of educating a large mass of people. Mentioning about a major eLearning initiative, Dikshit said a pilot project has been approved in July to leverage the infrastructure of the Edusat. This project would host 1,200 terminals in primary schools in select parts of the country. Given the magnitude of the project, even the pilot project is pretty big. This event has been convened to create a platform for experts to evolve strategies and bring awareness and exposure to new trends in e learning. The event is part of the Government's effort to engage policy makers, content developers, experts and e-learning community. IGNOU has come a long way leveraging the advantage of e learning and its network of users has grown from 650,000 in 2001 to 1.35 million spread across 35 countries. This would not have been possible without the support of technology and collaborative initiatives, he said. The Director General of C-DAC, S. Ramakrishnan, said research studies point towards significant impact e-learning creates. Societal impact shows that this has evolved to a super learning model which cuts across several disadvantages which the traditional classroom based learning has given the poor infrastructure. Death of distance due to Internet and other technologies has changed the rules of the game. The dissemination of information and knowledge is a challenge. The Government is making efforts to facilitate environment of tech-based education, the Joint Secretary, Department of Information Technology, Pankaj Agarwala, said in a written message. The Registrar of Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University, B.C. Jinaga, said the university was amongst early adopters of distance learning which was a combination of online and offline classroom approach, different from the current e-learning concepts. The State Government is also working on a network of universities through SONET. With about 50 percent of the population, about 500 million (and next only to Chinese population) below the 20 years age group, India is faced with the challenge of providing not just education but groom them well for future. This could possibly distinguish India from the rest in the emerging knowledge economy, Dr N. Sarat Babu of C-DAC said. Earlier, C-DAC launched Internet security related information on its portal. This is expected to later pave the way for an integrated in-demand course in cyber security.

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