TeachKnowLogist

Bloggers in Education: their beliefs, motivation, and perceived impact

2010-10-13T15:02:00.006+05:30

The phenomenal growth of blog and blogging has also affected the world of education and educators. Though probably nobody keeps a track of the number of blogs that exist now, previous statistics reveal that there are over 133 million blogs with over 175 thousand new blogs created everyday. The Number of blog posts everyday is over 1.4 millions. Technorati also conducts a regular survey of the bloggers to know about the what, why and how of blogging. In line with this thinking, an exploratory study has been conducted to understand the world of bloggers in education using the International Edubloggers Directory that has 1125 members from 64 countries and represented by 54% male and 46% female bloggers.

Educators have been attracted towards instant publishing and interactive features of the blog. Blogs are used for a variety of reasons: as a conversational tool, as a tool to create knowledge, for developing a community of practice, and for knowledge management. A review of literature by Luehmann (2008) reports that blogs allow self-direction, provide opportunities for reflection, invites perspective making, allow knowledge brokering, and support identity development. In the classroom and distance education settings, blogs are used as a tool for constructivist approach to learning and foster collaboration and meaning making in a social environment. Professional development of educators as a reflective practitioner is an important aspects of the numerous affordances the blog offers. The use of blog can also be analysed from the use and gratification perspective, which says that people use media strategically and choose a particular medium based on how it meets their specific needs or goals (Katz, Gurevitch, and Haas, 1973).

Sometime back I did a survey to know more about bloggers in education. What are the motives of educators in using blog? What are their beliefs about the media, and what are their perceptions of the impact of their blogging? The survey received a modest 77 responses that I have analyzed and present here for information of all.

Profile of the respondents

Male 61%, Female 36%, No response 3%.
About 17% respondents were in the age group of 46-50 and 51-55 years, followed by 15.5% in the age group of 36-40, and 14& in the age group of 41-45.
Forty-nine percent has a post graduate degree, while 22% were PhD, followed by 19% graduates. Six percent of bloggers were undergraduates.
Forty-two percent work in schools, 29% in university and colleges, 14% worked as independent consultants, and 10% were in variety of other sector including government.
Forty percent of the respondents were in mid career position, while 39% were in senior level position as per their professional work. Twelve percent indicated that they are in top position in their organization.
As the bloggers surveyed were in education, the discipline indicated by 57% of the respondents as Education/ learning science, while 15 indicated their discipline as humanities, 9% as sciences, 5% as social sciences. There were also bloggers who indicated their discipline as medical, engineering, business studies, and computer sciences.
Majority (about 82%) of blogs are in English language. Dutch bloggers represented in the survey are about 7%, while Spanish bloggers represented are about 5%. Other languages are German, Romanian, Bhasa Indonesia, Chinese, and Italian.
About 25% of the respondents were from United States, followed by 16% from United Kingdom, 9% from Ireland, and 5% from Spain.

Some major highlights

The earliest blog reported in this study started in 1995, while most (27%) of the blogs started in 2007, followed by in 2008 (26%).
Ninety six percent of bloggers do not like anonymous blogging, and 99% do provide comment facility in their blog. In 66% cases these comments are moderated.
Blog writing is done individually in 84% cases, while two author blogs accounted fro 4% and group blog accounted for 5%.
The time of Blogging: More than 50% of bloggers informed that there is no set time for blogging. Only ten percent do blogging at work.
Blogging Software: Blogger is the most preferred software used followed by WordPress.
There is wide variation in frequency of blogging by edubloggers. Daily bloggers are about 20%, and once a week type are about 44 percent, if we consider some of the figures combinedly.
It is interesting to note that about 47% of bloggers say that their institution is indifferent to their blogging activity, while only 17% encourage them to do so.
Majority (87%) of institutions do not have a blogging policy for their employees.
About 35% blogs are targeted toward public in general, while another 35% are targeted towards teachers.
A wide range of services and social software tools are used by the bloggers in education. They include weblinks, RSS feeds, video, blogroll, etc.
Only 13% allow advertisement in blog. While about 10% are paying for blogging, 8% of respondents receive payments for blogging. Rest others neither receive payments not make payments for blogging.
What blogs are liked by them?: I asked them to list 3 blogs lied by them. The list of blogs generated had 169 unique URL. However, the most liked ones are as follows: Free Technology for Teachers (9); Weblogg-ed (4); Half an hour (3); Integrating ICT into the MFL classroom (3); ZaidLearn (3).
Blogging Success: Most bloggers in education consider personal satisfaction (60%) as their success. Over 53% also consider the number of unique visitor to the blog as indicator of success.
Bloggers in education use blogging to share information (77%). They also believe it enhances their professional development (73%). Other reasons of using bloggng include: share experiences (55%), develop an identity of self (53%), talk to the community (52%). About 50% also believe blog as storing for future use.
Impact of blogging: Some more serious issue emerges here. Fifty seven percent of the respondents said their professional contact reduced due to blogging! About 50% believed that blogging improved their teaching.
Bloggers indicated about 206 key descriptors to depict their blogs. About 10% of the respondents listed ‘education’ as one of the descriptors, followed by about 5% listing ‘educational technology’. Education was also the major tag found in the blogs.
Attitude towards Blogging: Overall the attitude of bloggers towards blogging is very positive. Bloggers consider blogging as an activity that fosters reflection, critical thinking, and it promotes professional development of individuals. They do not consider that blogging has reduced publishing in professional journals.

References

Katz, E., Gurevitch, M., & Haas, H. (1973). On the use of the media for important things. American Sociological Review, 38, 164-181.
Luehmann, A.P. (2008). Using Blogging in Support of Teacher Professional Identity Development: A Case Study, The Journal of Learning Sciences, 17, 287–337.

Innovations in Distance Education

2010-05-21T14:16:00.001+05:30

Innovation has become a buzz word in all walks of life, and Distance Education is not far from it. Probably, the Asian Association Open Universities (AAOU) Conference in Teheran in 1995 was first such occasion to devote full fledged discussion on innovations in distance learning. But, if we closely look at the deliberations there and elsewhere in distance education literature about what is innovation, it would be much clear that there is much to be desired. While some would consider the use of an existing technology in a new context as innovation, others would consider a new teaching learning programme an innovation. Broadly, innovation is the act of starting something new. It could be a new idea, a new product or a new process. Two important concepts are related to innovations – creativity and change. Innovation is a creative process, and it advocates change in the current practice. The change could be radical or incremental. However, it is different from invention. Innovation is ideas applied in practice. As such, distance education itself is an innovation in the field of education!

We can all be creative and innovative, but contrary to popular belief innovations are not always appreciated. Remember, Alexander Graham Bell, who invented telephone was turned down by Western Union telling it as a “useless toy”. Scott Berkun, author of the Myths of Innovation, states “Every great idea in history has the fat red stamp of rejection on its face”. Does that mean, we should stop thinking and innovating? No. The real innovators sustain and persist. There may be rejection due to ego, pride, politics, priority, fear, greed, etc, but innovators survive due to their convictions and belief in what they have strived to create. Fortunately, history shows that when institutions do not recognize innovations, it results in entrepreneurship. But, this is also a sign of institutional failure to accept innovations internally, experiment and institutionalize ideas, because it may come from a person in low hierarchy. Fortunately for distance education in India, and for the Indira Gandhi National Open University, we have the National Centre for Innovations in Distance Education (NCIDE), which has various schemes for recognizing innovations within the institution and the system in the country.

For distance education, innovation is an imperative. It is not something that we may do, but it is something that we must do. For example, cost-effectiveness is one of the strong pillars of distance education. If we do not constantly think and innovate how can we maintain cost-effectiveness? One programme may not be cost-effective, but the system as a whole should be cost effective to justify its existence as an alternative mode to provide quality educational access to large number of people. So, we need to innovate new programmes that cater to the needs of the market. We need to use new instructional and learning design principles to develop programmes that are suitable to the needs of the learners. We need to use appropriate technology to make the programme more interactive and useful to the learners. In all the activities, we need to think about the philosophy of open learning, and innovate appropriate distance education programmes that provide access to more people at less cost. Innovations in distance education therefore should follow a system-wide perspective, and IGNOU being a pioneer in distance education, it is the responsibility of teachers and administrators to think about the system as a whole. Particularly, as a national university we are accountable to the nation to show that the system is what it is meant for, and therefore, we should constantly innovate in curriculum design, instructional design, learning material preparation, ICT enabled programme delivery, new programmes, and new technologies in education.

Published in ennovate: NCIDE eNewsletter published on 21 May 2010.

Experiences of Online Learning

2010-04-16T11:00:00.002+05:30

I have been involved in some form of online learning for quite sometime as learner, trainer, designers, and coordinator. I am currently teaching/facilitating/coordinating the Post Graduate Diploma in E-Learning (PGDEL) offered by Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU). In the Refresher Programme in Distance Education organized by STRIDE in March-April 2010, I made a short presentation in a panel discussion to share my own experiences to share lessons learned over the years. Some points are as follows:

Learners join online programme with different expectations and abilities. Some do not even have ICT skills, while some others expect the e-learning programme to be classroom type where teacher should teach/instruct. It is important that to make online learning successful, pre-admission counselling and appropriate screening of the learners are essential.
There is no “the model of e-learning”. Different programmes have different needs due to the nature of the learners and the discipline to be taught. So, the technologies used should be different depending on the nature of the programme its requirements.
It is possible to use ‘open source’ technologies sand ‘open content’ learning material to offer online programmes. Focus should be given more on teaching and learning, giving more interaction opportunity to the learners rather than development of materials alone.
Faculty training and understanding about e-learning in crucial. In this context, teachers should be trained on technology, pedagogy, and use of both for specific content area.
Workload of the faculty should be appropriately assessed. Online tutors should be engaged to provide more interaction.
Assessment in online learning should be considered through innovative lenses. It should be beyond the pen and paper test. So, use of objective type test, e-portfolio, term paper, etc should be considered. Presentation in virtual conferences are useful to authenticate learners.
At the design stage, the issues related to assessment should be addressed. So, clarity on this is there in the beginning itself. The learners know about the criteria of assessment, including the rubrics for each assessment tasks.
The more synchronous and tutor-assessed components are there in an online programme, the less it is possible to scale up. However, it is possible to have more interactivity without synchronous activities by involving the learners in collaboration and peer assessment activities.
Student cheating in online programme is a problem. Particularly unintentional plagiarism is a major concern, and the learners should be oriented about plagiarism, and referencing style.
Online library support is crucial to the learner development. Leaving students to depend on Google search alone in not useful. Institutions should provide access to online databases and digital library of their own through individual user id and password.

ICT and Distance Learning in India in 2009

2009-12-29T23:51:00.002+05:30

I have been closely observing the ICT and education developments in India, and based on this, I list here TEN landmark events/initiatives that rocked the educational establishments in India.

National Mission on Education through ICT launched by Govt of India in February 2009.
Controversial draft policy on distance learning made public by Govt. of India for discussion as part of 100 days of UPA Govt.
Wireless telephone crossed 500 million subscribers in November 2009.
Flexilearn – IGNOU Open Course Portal Launched in November 2009.
IGNOU goes dual mode, by starting face-to-face teaching on Campus.
Symposium on Open Educational Resources held to discuss and develop national policy on increasing access to educational resources held in August 2009.
IGNOU Announces Rajiv Gandhi International Prize for Education and Technology Development in November 2009.
Telecentre.org Academy agreement signed at IGNOU to start the Academy at IGNOU with support of IDRC, Canada.
IGNOU Engineering Aptitude Test (IGNEAT) conducted online failed.
IIM CAT Online Test showed problems in conduct of online examination.

If you think, this list can be further expanded, please feel free to add in your comment.

Mobile Technologies in Open Schools

2009-12-23T16:17:00.004+05:30

I did a small research and editing work entitled "Mobile Technologies in Open Schools" for the Commonwealth of Learning in 2009. The full publication can be downloaded. As a quick recap, I post here the guidelines I proffer for successful use of mobile technologies in teaching-learning situations, particularly in Open Schools.

Mobile technologies:

are accessible to learners (it is increasing at a faster rate);
are cheap and affordable (less costly for both institutions and learners);
are useful for numerous teaching functions (and are useful in learner support);
are interactive and therefore, improves two-way communication at a distance and reduces the transactional distance between the leaner and the teacher (also educational institution). They are easy to use and user friendly.;
are so pervasive and simple that they would require less organizational preparedness;
have novelty value, as it is the latest technology trend (and can motivate both teachers and learners to use); and
provide the highest speed (quickness) in terms of access to latest information and knowledge from anywhere, anytime.

However, as the field is growing, in spite of huge amount of literature availability, institutions take unknown journey in the filed on m-learning due to lack of models to emulate. As in any technological innovations, the initial cost is high for mobile learning, and appropriate funding should be worked out in the beginning for the system to be successful. Though every institution will have their specific requirements, I propose “PICTURE this” as a set of guidelines for taking context specific decisions to implement the use of appropriate mobile technology.

P – plan purposefully
I – identify learners’ needs
C – choose media
T – technology implementation
U – user manuals
R – run the system
E – evaluate performance and outcomes

And at the end, I emphasise: “Training has in-built success!”

Policy on Distance Learning in Higher Education

2009-09-04T12:51:00.002+05:30

My letter to the MHRD on the draft Policy issued for comments:

To
Dr. D.K. Paliwal
Deputy Educational Advisor (DL)
Ministry of Human Resource Development
Department of Higher Education
Room No. 325-C
Shastri Bhawan
New Delhi

Dear Sir,
This has reference to the Public Notice dated 28th August 2009 regarding “New Policy on Distance Learning in Higher Education”. While the attempt of the Ministry needs appreciation, I would like to submit before you some points for kind consideration of the intelligentsia of the Country so that we are able to create a knowledge society that recognizes the importance of 'learning' and for that matter Life Long Learning through Distance Education (DE).

Let me first appreciate the good work done so far. Probably for the first time in India, a policy statement on open and distance learning in higher education sector has been placed before the public for discussion. This is a bold attempt to admit past mistakes, rectify the errors committed, and willingness to improve and promote DE as a mode and discipline as recommended by the National Knowledge Commission. It is not possible for the Country to meet the challenges resulting out of the commitment towards Universalisation of Secondary Education, if we do not strengthen the DE systems of the country. Towards this, the policy clearly emphasizes the significance of distance education. The emphasis of use of ICT, research in Open and Distance Learning (ODL) and training programmes on ODL for teachers and administrators should be appreciated and implemented carefully.

The quality concerns on 7 (d) is really good as most institutions (including Open Universities) consider distance education as something in which with least investment can receive higher returns! Insisting on having full-time appointed faculty before starting any programme should help establish credibility of a programme, and this is something that should be insisted upon.

As mentioned in 7 (c), franchising of distance education by Universities should be stopped. It is where most distance education institutes and Open Universities, without proper quality checks join hands with private/less quality (private is not always less quality) institutions to offer programmes in the name of Private-Public Partnership (PPP) though a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) making it a perfect understanding to earn revenue from student fees. So, all the Open Universities and Distance Education Institutes offering programme through such MoUs and not having their own investments in the Study Centres should immediately be stopped.

Now, some suggestions and concerns.

That the policy should emphasize the significance of distance education for fostering a knowledge society by encouraging life long learning.
That the policy be re-named as “Open, Distance and Online Learning in Higher Education”.
That the emergence of National Commission on Higher Education and Research (to be established) would call for amendment to IGNOU Act 1985, especially the role assigned to IGNOU for maintenance of standards in distance education systems. It is appropriate that the nature of IGNOU (as a single mode distance teaching open university) may also be reviewed, as it has already started on-campus face-to-face programmes (which should fall under the approval of UCG). The IGNOU Act, Clause 4 emphasizes that IGNOU should in spirit be a University that uses various communication technologies to deliver instructions. So, in the light of the new Commission coming up, it is imperative that the IGNOU Act be amended suitably and its nature be clarified. Moreover, the DEC of IGNOU will have no role after the new Commission is established. Till then the modalities suggested are good to streamline operations.
That distance education will not be permissible in programmes having “extensive practical course work” is something of a major concern. What is meant by the phrase – extensive practical course work? Do we as a nation want our disadvantaged students to learn only Social Science and Humanities through DE? Do we believe that Science and Engineering subjects can't be taught through DE? This calls for a change in the mindset and understanding about DE and instructional design as such. Distance education can and should provide sufficient practical opportunities necessary for achievement of learning outcomes of a course/programme. If a programme that requires practical and does not have adequate provisions for the same in its design then that programme should be stopped. There are laboratories in colleges, universities and research institutions all over the country that are not utilized during week-ends, holidays and vacation period, and why can't we utilize such opportunities to provide practical experiences to DE students? Why can't Open Universities establish centralized/regional labs as done by the Dr. B.R. Ambedkar Open University? Let's all of us think -- What we want? Do we want quality education of all types for all or just one type of education for the large segments of population and another for the elite? My humble submission is that all kinds of programme should be allowed through distance education, provided the programme design adheres to the basic professional requirements of the programme and addresses the competence framework specified by the quality assurance agency ( what ever that may be).
It is also not understood why exemption is being given for the time being to Universities offering programmes before 1991 and established before 1985. Quality is a matter of process and attitude and not age of the institution. Earlier established institutions do not necessarily follow the quality benchmarks, and therefore, everyone should be treated equal. We should not create different types of institutions within the system and thereby create confusion in the minds of the students.
The point 7 (ix) is going to create hardship to the students who have already undergone a programme of study some years back. The suggestion of one chance appearance in another examination is probably not well thought out, and it is submitted that its operational mechanisms may be considered before the policy is finalized.

The above submissions are made before the Ministry for its kind consideration as a concerned Citizen of the country and as a professional practitioner of distance education and educational technology. Views expressed are personal and have nothing to do with the official position of the undersigned.

With regards,

Yours sincerely,

Sanjaya Mishra
Reader in Distance Education
STRIDE, IGNOU
Maidan Garhi
New Delhi 110068

Role of Teachers in Distance Education

2009-08-30T07:34:00.002+05:30

The Social Science Discussion Forum (SSDF) of the School of Social Science, Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) organized a Panel Discussion on “Role of Teachers in Distance Education: Challenges and Prospects” on 26th August 2009. The Panelists were Prof. J.M. Parekh, Prof. P.R.Ramanujam, Prof. A.S. Narang, and Prof. Swaraj Basu. I attended the same and shared my observations and reflections on the presentations vis-à-vis the developments in the University. This is interesting to note that the topic of the discussion came out of the suggestion made by Prof. Basu to the Convener, Dr. Japgpal Singh on the basis of a University wide appeal sent by Dr. Ranjith of the School of Journalism and New Media Studies to discuss on the challenges before the University due to start of face-to-face classes. While all the Panelist and most of the speakers shared their views that the start of face-to-face is beyond the scope of IGNOU Act, I personally emphasized on the topic as I had written about dual-mode teaching at IGNOU previously in my blog, and the discussion was expected to be on role of teachers in distance education.

As a teacher of distance education as a discipline, I have always considered that teaching is teaching, irrespective of the mode, and urged the teaching community of the University not to consider themselves different as there has always been attempts to marginalize teachers as “academic managers”. The roles of teachers irrespective of the mode of teaching are: Curriculum design and development, Content presentation, Assessment of learner performance (continuous and term-end), Learner support, Research and publication (disciplinary and on learning technology), and Extension service and consultancy. So, it is only in the area of content presentation the method differs in distance education, as it uses media (print, audio, video, multimedia, web-based courses) to deliver teaching. These materials are designed with special care to facilitate learning, and are said to have the qualities of a teacher. In the face-to-face teaching, the teacher only delivers lectures and engage the class in various interactive methods. The other roles being same, there is on reason for always comparing distance education to face-to-face education system. Moreover, we do not compare oranges and apples!

The most important activity as such is preparation of learning materials. Interestingly, in order to quickly develop learning materials, the University adopted in the beginning a mode of taking help from teachers from the face-to-face colleges and universities to develop materials. Thus, without use of the term “Outsource”, it practiced outsourcing of the unit writing tasks. The teacher in the University writes only some units of a course that he/she teaches, and thus is labeled as “Course coordinator”. This is a serious issue, and teachers in the University need to assert themselves of their role as teachers, and develop courses without depending on external course writers. So, as we outsource unit writing, the University has taken it little further to outsource development of programmes to external agencies through MoUs and partnerships! This is marginalization of the teaching function, as there is a growing belief that courses and programmes can be developed elsewhere and can be delivered by an Institute/University without having faculty on its roll. In this connection, the role of Distance Education Council (DEC) needs to be re-looked. Interestingly the DEC is supposed to maintain quality and standards in the Distance Education System in the country; but it has failed to develop a credible system, and it is teachers of IGNOU who go in accreditation teams to different institutions in the country and approves them, without questioning the process adopted by the DEC.

There has been a serious degradation in professional ethics of teachers at IGNOU, as all the programmes and courses are approved by statutory bodies like the School Board, Academic Council, where there is sufficient representation of teachers. There is rarely any instance of dissent to any item in any of these statutory bodies. Thus, all the recent developments are proposed and approved by the teachers in the University. Once these items are approved, people talk about these issues outside in private (non-relevant platforms). It also seems that there is serious lack of integrity of teachers!

Many times, colleagues at IGNOU boast of their quality materials. It is time to have self-reflection. Who certified that our material is good? Even if, it is good, what is the “goodness of the good”? Are we aware of these? IGNOU is one kind of distance education system, and that can’t be a benchmark for others to follow. Most of the time, decisions are taken that are not in tune with distance education practices worldwide, making our system vulnerable to criticism and others looking at us as untouchables. If the recent developments in the University are not addressed seriously, there is every danger that the students of the distance education system shall be at a disadvantage!

I thank the convener of SSDF for organising a Panel discussion on such an important topic. The participation in the meeting was highly satisfactory as over 25 faculty members attended the same. Interestingly, non of the Directors of the 22 Schools of Studies of IGNOU attended the meeting!

Open Access and Open Educational Resources

2009-08-22T23:16:00.002+05:30

On August 20-21, 2009 I attended a symposium organized by my University (IGNOU) on Open Education Resources (OER) for Network-Enabled Education. The meeting was attended by many educational leaders and technology experts who are engaged in developing educational materials using technology in Indian Universities, IITs and other civil society organizations. The meeting was facilitated by Dr. Vijay Kumar of MIT, USA and supported by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. The objective of the meeting was to take follow-up action on the recommendations of the National Knowledge Commission on OER and Distance Education, and prioritize action areas for India in the area of OER. The Experts in the meeting deliberated on various issues surrounding OER in both the days through group work, plenary sessions and listing of ideas and voting for prioritization. While, a large number of issues and solutions were highlighted, the group more or less agreed on the following:

There is a need to have a national level research and resource centre for Open Source Software in Education
Educational content created through public funds be available freely for adoption and adaptation
Metadata standards for OER be developed urgently
Certification policies using OER be developed
Join international movements on OER

That in a meeting on OER, the issue of certification became a major issue highlights the importance we place in degrees. While there are people who would like to de-link degrees from jobs, there are yet another section, who think that a framework should be in place to help institutions to provide certification to individuals who use OER and learn on their own. While, it would be a good idea to have a national certifying body for various levels and disciplines of education, based on national qualifications framework, the OERs are created for anyone to learn and promote self-learning and life long learning. Thus, it should be left to educational institutions to decide how they would certify individuals who learn on their own.

Moreover, the use of OER should not be tagged with qualifications, as we want OER to promote education, which is becoming costlier day by day due to raising costs of textbooks and other resources. Alongside this, there is a prevalent misconception about OER that it is equal to Open Access. While, Open Access is a necessary pre-condition for OER, it is not a sufficient condition. UNESCO in 2002 defined OER as “the provision of educational resources, enabled by information and communication technologies, for consultation, use and adaptation by a community of users for non-commercial purposes”. Thus, apart from free access the material should be free from Copyright to be adapted by another person of the community. This is also emphasized by the NKC, when it says that knowledge economy would progress through effective use of “quality Open Access (OA) materials and Open Educational Resources (OER) through broadband Internet connectivity”. However, many do not recognize this and consider the availability of video-based course of NPTEL as OER. It is possible to adopt the NPTEL courses by any institution for its academic programmes, but it is not possible to edit these videos and create something new out of existing materials. If the IITs and NPTEL would like to allow this, then probably they have to use something like Kaltura (a video wiki on the web).

The third aspect of OER, which is mis-understood by many, is quality. OER are created by the community and maintained by the community for the community. So, the quality is a concern of the community. But, Experts want to assure the quality of OERs or accredit the quality of OERs. This is not in the interest of OER development. The quality matrix should be developed by the community, and left to individual users (learners/institutions) to define their own quality in the context of the community matrix and use it for their specified purpose. After all quality is fitness for purpose. If we want to define quality upfront in a language developed by an agency or individual, then we are not going to support the development of the OER community. In the WikiEducator (in which I am involved), we make efforts to take decisions based on community consensus.

The technology platform for the OER should accommodate the quality matrix in its metadata scheme, and thus, make the OERs available, accessible and usable as per the user's choice. With Web 2.0 technologies, it is now possible to make OERs available in a variety of formats in an appropriate Creative Commons licensing. However, there is a need to provide incentive to the people engaged in OER creation and development. Those with substantial contribution to creation/authoring of OERs and/or community service as Editors may be credited for their work and due recognition given in terms of credit points in promotion and other forms of awards. This way, we can tap the large base of teachers in the Indian education system. However, I will again emphasize about the need of sustained training of teachers on OER (both concept and technology) to make the OER movement a reality. Let the OER movement grow in India, and national level institutions like IGNOU, NCERT and NIOS come out of the Copyright regime.

The World is Open

2009-08-13T13:02:00.006+05:30

Recently Curtis J. Bonk (picture in right), Professor of Instructional Systems Technology at the School of Education at Indiana University sent a copy of his new book entitled “The World is Open: How Web Technology is Revolutionizing Education” (TWiO) to me (as luckily I was interviewed as part of the research work on the theme of the book). I came in contact with this highly inspiring Professor and Thinker personally at the E-Learn 2008 at Las Vegas. On his invitation, I was there to talk about e-Learning in India in the E-Learn Asia day organized during the conference. Prof. Bonk, is Founder and President of SurveyShare and CourseShare. He is also a former educational psychologist and before that a CPA and corporate controller. His master's and doctoral degrees in educational psychology are from the University of Wisconsin. Though I knew about him from his earlier books, I was pleasantly surprised to know that he is alumnus of University of Wisconsin Extension and studied education initially as a distance learner. His new book is a must read for all who believe in the power of technology and open access to education and open learning. I asked him 10 questions about his book to get some more insights, and despite his busy schedule obliged me. I present the interview to the world, here:

Q.1. How did you get the idea for TWiO?
I read Thomas Friedman’s book, the World is Flat, in May 2005, or I should say, I listened to it as an audiobook. A freer and more open education was emerging as a hot topic just as Friedman’s book was swiftly moving to the top of various bestseller lists. When I was asked to keynote the International E-Learning in Vancouver that October, I was trying to make sense of these trends for myself.

I realized that Friedman was informing the world about 10 key forces that had leveled the world from an economic standpoint. He had documented an interesting and quite powerful triple convergence that had never previously been witnessed on this planet. First, there were new economic players competing with the United States and other dominant economic powers. Friedman forced us to consider the global impact of the billions of new economic participants from India, China, and Eastern Bloc countries. This mass of people would stick more than a dent into the American economic engine.

Second, he asked us to consider why these individuals could not do this in the past but could with relatively ease today. Among the obvious answers was the wealth of collaborative technologies that were free or inexpensively found in Web-based environments. With such technologies fostering instantaneous business collaborations across regions of the world, individuals formerly left out of most economic deals could compete with firms in North America. In effect, collaborative technologies had reduced the entry fee to participation and in effect equalized the economic playing field.

The third factor in all this flattening was the increased reliance on horizontal management processes. Traditional multi-level hierarchies had been condensed or flattened entirely. People normally considered to be at the bottom rung of the decision-making chain now had a voice, and, in effect, some sense of power and identity. And workflow patterns were becoming much more collegial and personal than they been decades earlier when I was a corporate controller working in a cube farm.

These were the critical “p” words of business—new players, playing fields, and management processes. In training and education, however, the three “p” words related to piping or technological infrastructure, pages of content or resources found online, and a participatory culture wherein learners contribute to the process and not simply receive information from a teacher or trainer. While the increased bandwidth or infrastructure and trillions of pages of content of the first two ideas is fairly obvious to anyone who has journeyed online, the latter idea is a new learning theory focusing on learner participation and contributions brought about by the Web 2.0. As such, it is still evolving.

Q.2. Tell/Describe in brief the central theme of TWiO.

With initial ideas about this triple convergence of the educational world in place, I went to the conference in Vancouver. When there, as with Friedman’s ten flatteners, I proposed a set of 10 emerging technology trends. At the time, I really did not understand the link to open education; all I saw were 10 cool technologies that fostered learning. Little did I know that the topic of my keynote would intrigue a Microsoft official in the audience to invite me back to the west coast two weeks later to discuss the free and open learning world to a room filled with corporate executives from around their planet. A discussion of free and open software at Microsoft? Yes it happened.

When that was over, I kept presenting on this topic. It was highly popular with all sectors of education from preschools and K-12 schools to government and military settings to corporate training environments to more informal or casual learning situations. In the summer of 2007, I began to write about these trends. And I continued to write for months without much of a break. Gradually ten trends or “openers” coalesced into an easy to recall acronym or first letter mnemonic, WE-ALL-LEARN. These ten openers are noted below.

Ten Openers: (WE-ALL-LEARN)
1.Web Searching in the World of e-Books
2.E-Learning and Blended Learning
3.Availability of Open Source and Free Software
4.Leveraged Resources and OpenCourseWare
5.Learning Object Repositories and Portals
6.Learner Participation in Open Information Communities
7.Electronic Collaboration
8.Alternate Reality Learning
9.Real-Time Mobility and Portability
10.Networks of Personalized Learning

These ten trends formed the basis for my new book, The World Is Open: How Web Technology Is Revolutionizing Education, published in July 2009 by Jossey-Bass, an imprint of Wiley (http://www.worldisopen.com/). Each trend is a chapter. If any one of these had emerged in the 1950s or 1960s, it would been deemed a revolution. With all ten coalescing at the same time, there are monumental shifts occurring before our eyes.

Q.3. What are the significance of "WE-ALL-LEARN"?

The WE-ALL-LEARN framework provides several advantages for leaders. First, it offers them with a tool from which to understand new learning technologies and resources. This perspective can breed confidence as well as offer sanity in the midst of this confusing world we are in. An open world metaphor symbolizes that anyone can learn any from anyone else at any time. Now corporate executives have a tool from which to make long-range planning and forecasting reports. They can also make decisions about where to place valued resources. Training managers might use the stories, ideas, and examples embedded within each opener to justify their e-learning and related training initiatives or strategic plans.

As with Friedman’s The World Is Flat book, ideas from The World Is Open (TWIO) book might be used for retreats and departmental reflections. WE-ALL-LEARN can be a framework from which everyone can understand and discuss. Thoughtful planning takes place instead of more haphazard initiatives. Each of the ten openers make evident the options for learning that exist for everyone. There is no shortage of content or tools for learning. Not every idea, resource, or opener will excite all learners or organizations. Many will, however.

Q.4. How do you describe WE-ALL-LEARN? Is it a framework/ model/ approach/ theory?

It is a framework. Each part represents a different opener. There are ten openers. The acronym helps people remember all ten. As indicated above, these include e-books, open source software, e-learning, blended learning, virtual worlds, mobile learning, collaborative technology, and many other ways to learn. If you tried to remember every announcement about technology, you would go crazy. The WE-ALL-LEARN framework helps avoid insanity.

Q.5. Could you elaborate the concept "fee learning zones" predicted in the book?

I just point out that with all the Web 2.0 technology available today, many educational contents are now free. Some people will package these educational resources up into certificates and courses. Governments will designate free learning zones without advertisements. So much is possible.

Q.6. What according to you is the major challenge/barrier to see TWiO grow?

There are many. Doubt and naysayers is a big one. Many will not believe that the world is open now or at any moment in time in the future. But it is! It certainly is. Right here, right now! They instead see only the problems—issues of copyright, cheating, assessment dilemmas, quality concerns, and so on. I detail 12 key challenges at the end of the book. Some might say that I should have them front and center at the start of the book. I think at the end is fine.

Q.7. How do you see the role of 'teachers' in the new world, where OERs are available in abundant?

Many new roles. Some will be facilitators or course moderators. Some will be counselors. Some will be course or program developers. Others will remain as teachers. And still others will assume multiple roles. We will soon see the rise of the super e-mentor or super e-coach who understands human development or counseling as well as the multiple paths and resources to learn online and also have discipline expertise such as social work, engineering, or art. You need all three skills to be a super e-mentor.

Q.8. What are your message for the educational leaders in the book?

Many here too. Read or explore what is out there. Take some risks with your teaching. Reflect on what works and does not work. Share what you find out or discover. Join professional organizations related to teaching with technology. Much is possible for the informed.

Q.9. What institutional changes are required in the open world?

An institution must become global—its leaders, instructors, students, staff, and alumni, all must begin to think more globally. We have to move away from traditional classrooms to nontraditional. Nontraditional should be the norm. Lifelong learning in an open world means that in a few decades most of your learners will be over age 30 or 40. Many will be over 80 or 90 or even 100. And some teachers may only be 10 years old or less. We have to totally think differently about training and education. There are a million ways to learn and millions more resources to learn with. Why do we restrict students to just 1 or 2 possible paths?

Q.10. Who is the major gainer in the 'Web of Learning'?

The learner. The learner has more ways to learn. More times to learn. More people in which to learn as well as share the results with. The learner has a gigantic vault of learning available every day rain or shine. The world is as open to learn at 6 am as it is at 6 pm.

Of course, educators are freed up too. The life of an educator in an open learning world is more lively, richly creative, and personally satisfying. There is no better time to be a teacher or a learner.

Thank you Curt. I wish your book goes on to become a classic in Education and WE ALL LEARN from it.

Training 3.0

2009-07-28T11:24:00.002+05:30

These days it has become a fashion to write 2.0 for everything in life, and thus, I decided to write something beyond! But, is that so simple? Interestingly, while analyzing the training technologies of the past and the present, it so happened that training has actually traversed three stages, and here I outline these as follows:

Training 1.0 -- The classroom-based training: Here, essentially the trainer and the trainee meet face to face in the training room or the workplace. The trainer used a variety of tools and technologies to deliver training, including the use of Over Head Transparencies, Slides, PowerPoint, Multimedia CDs, and Computer-Based Training used in Instructor Lead situations. Training was cost and labour intensive, and most of the time difficult to assess the effectiveness of the training.

Training 2.0 -– The Online Training: This is the second-generation training, where training was delivered in a networked situation using Learning Management Systems (LMS), Knowledge Management System (KMS) and Employee Performance Support Systems (EPSS). Essentially, the systems used Internet or Intranet for the delivery of text, audio, video, multimedia, and animation supported by group and individual communication to facilitate learning. This kind of training, is normally referred as eLearning in the training industry and by the human resource development professionals, added enormous benefits to the training and development professionals in terms of cost cutting, and time saving, leading to increased return of investments. However, training effectiveness remained a question again, and institutions started looking at more informal approaches to conduct training for their employees.

Training 3.0 -- Informal Learning Online: Informal learning is sustainable, and less structured to interfere in the day-to-day work of the employees. So, Training 3.0 is all about creating an informal learning environment that is motivating as well as informative. It tries to utilize the employee’s individual interest and abilities to network amongst peer group to learn and share. As such, human beings are social animal, who are more interested in what others are doing, and they would like to learn from talking and discussing from each other. So, Training 3.0 is about use of the Social Media in training.

Social Media Technologies
There are various types of social media technologies that are available for use in training. Some of these are: Blogs, Wikis, and Social Networks. We will discuss these in the context of training, and how these emerging trends in training technologies are influencing the world of training and development professionals.

Blogs
According to Technorati – a blog search engine, today there are over 133 million blogs in all knowledge domains, and there are about 900, 000 blog posting every 24 hours. A blog is a website maintained by an individual or a team to share personal reflection and activities. Of theses blogs about 12% are corporate blogs discussing issues related to a company. The blog is a personal space, where other users can provide comments and develop a network. Seventy three percent of bloggers use blog to share their expertise and experiences. Training and development professionals can use many free blog services available to create their own space, and also filter related blogs on the web and make these available to the employees to subscribe. The use of Really Simple Syndication (RSS) technology in the blogs make it simple for the users to be informed about new postings regularly. This become a rich learning source, and really does not require any special intervention by the training and development professional except identifying and informing the employees about relevant sources of blog or providing them an orientation on how to find relevant blogs. Some typical blog creation software are eBlogger, moveable type, Word press, Liverjournal, Apache Roller, etc.

Wikis
Wiki is a Hawaiian word meaning quick quick. It is a quick way to create web pages without the knowledge of HTML. But, most importantly it is a collaborative platform to create and share knowledge. The most widely known wiki is Wikipedia, which runs on the Media Wiki software. Besides this, there are many other wiki platform such as the pb wiki, wikispaces, etc. A wiki platform provides an easy to use method to edit webpages, and link to multimedia resources. Having used the www.wikieducator.org platform supported by the Commonwealth of Learning for providing wiki skills training and development of self-learning materials, this author can personally tell about the utility of this simple technology to create content and make it available to employees for learning at very low cost (almost zero cost!). The wiki makes it possible to develop a collaborative space for learners/employees to share and discuss. It keeps a record of all activities on the wiki site, and thus, can be used to record both explicit and tacit knowledge. Installing a company wide wikispace is easy, if some server side technical help is available, or it can also be done in free sites available in abundance.

Social Networks
We all recognize the potentials of social networks in our day-to-day life. It is now possible through the use of technology platforms to do all kinds of socialization activities from sharing photos, and files to provide expert advice and guidance online. The most popular social networking sites are facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, and Ning. Interestingly, the social networking sites provide an integrated space for blogs, wikis, message boards, and file sharing facilities. It is really a cool place to be in for both socialization and learning. Using social network technologies individual employees can create their own network of professional ‘community of practice’. Organizations can create their own social networks involving employees, customers and all stakeholders through Open Source technologies like elgg.

What’s the Big Idea?
It’s ‘informal learning’! Training and Development (T&D) professionals need to be the change agent and change themselves first to become “Learning Professionals”. As Jay Cross tells in his blog, learning professionals of the future needs to focus on the following three core processes:

Facilitating collaborative work and learning in the organizations;
Sensing patterns to develop new work practices and solutions; and
Working with management to support and fund new ideas and processes.

All these can be done through adoption of a social media technology-based learning space. Today’s organizations need employees who are creative and can think and reflect about their work. Such a workforce can only be developed by transformation at the top level by an understanding of the ‘value of the crowd at the bottom’. So, the biggest challenge before the T&D professional is creating the informal learning space for the employees in the organizations, though technology is not a problem at all. The culture of the organization needs to change from a ‘Tour and Travel’ based training to a ‘Table-based Thinking’ through the use of social media technologies. The use of social media technologies would enable T&D professionals to develop a learning space that is open, participatory and development oriented rather than closed, top-down and training oriented (just training for the sake of training). In such a scenario, the training content becomes resources available online, but are not instructor-led. The learner/trainee/employee takes the initiative to learn and improve, finds experts who can support his/her learning, develop a learning and development path, and implement it through reading, reflecting, doing and reviewing. While all these are also done online, the tacit knowledge generated in the process by the individual is also recorded in the online system making it available to others. The learning path used by one employee for a problem becomes a guide to other future employees. In the learning process, the employee may use blogs of a number of peers and experts inside and outside the organization; chat and videoconference with them; post comments to their blogs and receive advise; create his/her own wikispaces using already available learning resources with Creative Commons licenses; and develop a network of his/her own in the organization as well as outside the world.

Thus, Training 3.0 believes in the following:

That the training we intend to provide to a group already exists in some or all of the group members;
That people learn better from each other in an informal setting than from a master trainer in a formal setting;
That learning is more sustainable when it is situated, contextual, just-in-time, and work-place based rather than at a laboratory/training room/ tourist resort;
That people learn best when they have a genuine need to learn and are motivated and interested to learn; and
That staff learn best when they take the responsibility of their own learning, without being constantly monitored by a supervisor.

So, a T&D professional who uses Training 3.0 strategies believes in the core principles above, and creates the online social network place for its stakeholders. How does it look like? Training does not happen in scheduled 9 to 5 sessions with its usual coffee/tea and lunch breaks. The T&D professional is now re-designated a the Chief Learning Officer (CLO) of the organization, who with the help of the information technology division sets up a social network site for the organization that becomes the learning gateway for all its employees. It also gives access to the customers/stakeholders of the organization to be a registered user of the social network, thereby making it an open system with access control for the internal members. Individual employees can create their own blogs and profile, set their own goals and learning path. The T&D professionals create groups, to which employees join as per their interest and contribute. They create their own learning resources and work manuals using the wikispaces. The social networking site becomes a space for interaction with the stakeholders of the organization leading to quick response time. Individual employees use the system to search and find resources outside the organization, and create bookmarks and links on the organizational social network thereby adding more content to the network and making the system content rich. In such a learning space, even if an employee joins another organization, the content generated by him/her remains their for others to use while the employee may move on and still continue to update the social networking site of the earlier organization as a professional stakeholder from outside. The social networking site can be used for employee performance and review as we can relate the performance of the individual to the training efforts made. This will also solve the problem of training effectiveness, as we can quantify the time and efforts made vis-a-vis the individual and organizational gains. The system can also take care of the Training 2.0 scenarios to help T&D professionals organize occasional online training sessions/courses as required due to new initiatives and developments in the organizational supra system.

Conclusions
Training technologies are developing fast. New training technologies are now available almost everyday. However, in most organizations the T&D professionals need to adapt to the changing scenario, and the top management need to facilitate the change. It is through the appropriate deployment of technologies that we can leverage its power. A technology used inappropriately is as good as not having it. Thus, it is important to think of strategy first than the technology. A philosophical stand/vision on how the top management views the importance of learning and the need for empowering its employees is of paramount importance to the T&D professionals. With the new set of tools and technologies available to us in Training 3.0, it is possible to take organizations in the direction of its stated objectives. T&D professionals would lead in the new age learning organizations, if they use Social Media Technologies!

Note: This blog post has been selected for Certificate of Merit by the Indian Society for Training and Development in the Emerging Thinkers Awards Category in 2009.

IGNOU started Community Colleges

2009-07-08T14:43:00.002+05:30

The Community College as an alternative and flexible system of higher education and vocational training established itself in the early 20th century in the United States. William Rainey Harper, who became the President of University of Chicago at the age of 35, contributed immensely to the spread of “Junior Colleges” that became popular as Community Colleges later. These colleges normally offered 2 year “Associate Degree” which allowed students to transfer to four year degree college or universities in the United States to study for another 2/3 years to complete a bachelor's degree. These colleges are characterized by open admission, flexible scheduling and curriculum, vocational orientation, collaboration with industry and local organizations, and cost-effectiveness. In 2006–07, there were 1,045 community colleges in the United States, enrolling 6.2 million students (or 35 percent of all postsecondary students enrolled that year) (NCES, 2008). According to a report submitted to the Planning Commission, Govt of India, the first community college in India was established in 1995, and by 2003 there were 95 community colleges with similar objectives as that of the American counterparts. However, not all are recognized by Universities. By starting to recognize the Community Colleges, Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) has started a “revolution” in Indian vocational and higher education sector, as the intent and objectives of these align with the open learning philosophy of IGNOU. This initiative of IGNOU will lead to more enrollment in the Bachelor Degree Programmes (BDP) in coming years when students pass out of the Associate Degree Scheme from these Community Colleges. However, it will be further good, if IGNOU can take one step more to initiate these Community Colleges to the concept of Distance Education and urge them to start distance learning programmes. Since the objectives of IGNOU is to promote distance education, and democratize higher education, it should always look for opportunity to promote this, and through the distance learning programmes of the Community Colleges, it is possible to reach more students and increase access to higher education . In the United States also the Community Colleges offer a significant number of courses through distance mode. In 2006-7, 97% of the public 2-year degree colleges offered some form of distance learning. So, in India too the concept has a strong potential to make quality education 'reach the unreached'.

While the objective of increasing access to higher education through Community College is welcome and appreciated, it is important that the scheme is implemented and monitored systematically. After the first back of Associate Degree holders are out, the system should be able to inform us, the success rate, trade-wise vocational education imparted, state-wise vocational statistics, percentage of student going in for BDP of IGNOU; placement of the students, etc. It is also necessary to ensure quality of operations and academic offerings in the Community Colleges, and therefore, necessary guidelines, standards, and manuals may be developed. Capacity building of the faculty and non-teaching staff to ensure quality is highly important and regular training programmes should be conducted by IGNOU on various areas such as needs assessment, curriculum development, teaching methodology. Distance learning material development, use of technology in teaching and learning, application of technology in office administration, evaluation technology, etc. It is also important to think of credit transfer of the Associate Degree to regular conventional colleges and universities. To this extent, the University Grants Commission may develop norms and guidelines to be followed by the colleges and universities. If the Associate Degree holders get opportunity to join the conventional higher education system as well, it will add to the value of the scheme and also improve mobility of learners giving them more choice.

In short, a good scheme has been initiated, but there are miles to go before its results are visible to the society. I will be interested in news and views about the success of the scheme and its implementation and monitoring aspects.

IGNOU goes dual-mode

2009-07-05T23:43:00.003+05:30

Distance education systems around the world manifest themselves in primarily two forms: Dual-mode institutions (where distance education is one wing of the face-to-face/ contiguous teaching) and Single mode institutions (where distance education/asynchronous teaching and learning is the prime mode of educational transactions, such as in the Open Universities). However, there are also other organizations forms such as consortia and network modes (due to the emergence of the Internet and its World Wide Web). While the history of distance education is over 150 years, the first single mode distance education university, i.e. Open University, United Kingdom was established in1969. It has always been argued that the dual-mode distance education institutes faced enormous problems of autonomy to exploit the potentials of distance education within the boundaries of the traditional face-to-face teaching learning system. In some dual-mode institutions, it has also been argued that the quality of distance teaching improved as the same faculty that teach in the conventional classroom develop the learning materials and provide learner support at a distance. But, the number of single mode distance education institutions grew to provide autonomy of innovative practices to reach the un-reached by deploying a variety of media and technologies in a quasi-industrial model. While increasing access has been the prime motive of open universities, the conventional universities have adopted distance education to become dual mode to improve their financial position.

When the Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) was established in 1985, the prime objective of the legislature was to democratize higher education and provide educational opportunities to those who could not attend the conventional face-to-face institutions for various reasons. IGNOU was also mandated to promote distance education and maintain the quality of distance education in India. The IGNOU Act also emphasized that IGNOU will use innovative educational technologies to deliver its degrees. Open universities are also popular because of their cost-efficiency and cost-effectiveness due to economies of scale. It is also not possible for the public sector to establish large number of face-to-face institutions to meet the growing demands of the citizens, and therefore, promoted the establishment of single mode distance education universities. So far India has one national Open University and fourteen state open universities. Today the distance education system caters to over 25 percent of students in higher education. In order to accommodate the same number of students in face-to-face institutions, we need to create over 1000 universities. This emphasizes that the distance education system has both its political and economic place in our society. However, in spite of over 45 years of the existence of distance education and nearly 25 years of the national Open University, the quality of education in the distance education system is questioned. Sometimes, this is due to lack of awareness about the robustness of the educational practices in the Open Universities and sometimes due to the over zealous educational administrators who without caring for quality offer educational programmes through distance education. The distance education system needs to be strengthened at a time when there is a growing perception that without face-to-face interaction the quality of education suffers. Further adoption of new technology as envisaged in the IGNOU Act is the need of the hour.

While technology augmentation is underway, the IGNOU has suddenly decided to start face-to-face programmes on the Campus from July 2009. However, it may be quickly added that there are some highly technical programmes that are already offered through face-to-face mode in collaboration with other Government agencies (such as the Hotel Management and the Nautical Sciences). Interestingly, these programme were offered in collaboration with institutes that had no authority to grant degrees, and thus, they wanted IGNOU’s collaboration, and IGNOU had very little contribution in their design, development and delivery. IGNOU has not offered any sound reasons for starting face-to-face teaching, except that it says some form of face-to-face programmes are already in operation, and other Open Universities like Hong Kong Open University, Athabasca University, Canada and Open University, UK are also offering face-to-face programmes! Lack of sound academic rationale for starting face-to-face programme by IGNOU needs some clarification. The Govt. of India needs to explain to the nation its policies and priorities vis-à-vis distance education.

Without going into the context in which other open universities offer face-to-face programmes, it is important for IGNOU to think of its role and actions.

If IGNOU’s role is to promote distance education, is it right to start face-to-face teaching and create two categories of students? Do starting of face-to-face programmes lead to promotion of distance education?
Has IGNOU conducted any cost-analysis before starting face-to-face teaching? What has happened to the concept of ‘economies of scale’ and ‘cost-effectiveness’?
Is the present staff strength in each faculty sufficient to conduct quality face-to-face teaching? Is there sufficient infrastructure in the University to conduct face-to-face programmes, such as hostels, laboratory, etc?
How does IGNOU think to reach the un-reached through the face-to-face programmes?

Distance education is not averse to face-to-face teaching as long as it is used as one of the medium of teaching and learning and not the ‘sole’ mode of teaching and learning. So, face-to-face interaction is used in distance education as a support to enrich the learning experiences depending on the need of the subject and/or the need of the learner to have extra support. So, for having research degree programmes in face-to-face mode in Open Universities (which is usually happening else where), is natural as it is a specialized training not expected to have more number of students. But, to start master degree programmes face-to-face for only 20 students on campus is outcome of an elitist thinking that does not believe in democratization of higher education.

As a distance education professional engaged in research and training on distance education, I have been talking of the advantages of distance education for the last 15 years, and suddenly my own University starts face-to-face teaching. It not only leaves me thinking and searching for the justifications, but also gives me a sinking feeling. I ask to myself, is distance education dead? Is it not contemporary? I asked one of my colleagues what is your opinion on this issue? The reply was – at the time of convergence due to technology, there is a need to re-think distance education. Yes, there is a need to re-think. But, in which direction? The conventional universities are adopting technology to use e-learning (that provided flexible, open and distance learning opportunities). This is progressive thinking, as the emergence of technology has made it possible that the ‘distance’ could be next door, and interaction could be more than the classroom! We have always attributed face-to-face teaching as rigid and in-flexible system, yet, the University has decided to go dual mode. I wonder what kinds of technologies the University will use in the face-to-face classrooms to be innovative and reach more than 20 students. I am looking for a rationale for going dual mode, as a teacher of distance education. Maybe I get my answers soon, and I request readers to help me in my endeavors.

N.B. This is not a criticism, but a self-reflection of a distance education teacher.

Open University Degree

2009-03-02T11:20:00.003+05:30

With the recent judgment of the Supreme Court of India, in the Civil Appeal No. 4173 of 2008, student community and the academia are confused because of the poor standard of reporting in the mainstream newspapers. The court order is not adverse on the quality of education through the Open Universities. It only reminds us of the supremacy of the UGC Act over the IGNOU Act. Though, the IGNOU is established by an Act of the Parliament with special powers to maintain the standards of distance education systems, the objects of the University is for a specific purpose, ie. To democratize higher education by providing an alternative system to those who can't attend the conventional face-to-face system due to various disadvantages. In no case, the IGNOU Act can be above UGC Act as the object of the latter is to maintain the standards of higher education in India covering all universities, including the IGNOU. The open university system has to follow the directives of UGC to maintain parity of the degrees issued, and the Distance Education Council (DEC) of IGNOU needs to frame ordinances and regulations within the ambit of the UGC framework. Though the system of distance education is different and uses a number of innovative practices (including a student study time based credit system), it should not violate the basic guidelines on nomenclature, duration and specification of degrees (getting permission of UGC, if a degree is not listed). The problem is: universities in India are autonomous without check, and sometimes overlook the guidelines/regulations set by statutory bodies in order to increase revenues. Such practices continue due to lack of respect for the Act/Statutes/Ordinances, which the senior officials should uphold and perform. Sometime back there was a proposal for a quasi-judicial tribunal for educational institutions in the country to consider cases of malpractices and disputes in educational institutions. The fate of which is unknown. A tribunal should be there to deal with educational cases speedily, and serve as a check to the unlawful acts of senior officers of the autonomous educational institutions, making them accountable for their actions.

Students in open universities and distance education system should be more careful before joining a programme or institution. The degree offered by state universities/ central universities/ deemed to be universities/ institutions of national importance are recognized, provided the universities follow the directives of the statutory bodies like UGC, AICTE, MCI, etc. Thus, before putting your hard earned money to a distance education programme, do exercise your rights to ask for the approvals of the relevant statutory bodies. It is important to look for academic rigour of the programme such as conduct and attendance in counselling, number of assignments and their assessment, examination procedures, quality of learning materials, etc. before joining a programme. Unfortunately, many distance learners want quick degrees without making adequate efforts to learn. When you go for quick and easy degree, you pay the price by falling into the trap.

Many a time, the issue of non-recognition of open university degree in admission to higher degree in conventional face-to-face universities also come to notice. It may be noted here that Universities are autonomous to decide whom to admit into a programme/course based on equivalence of the similar qualifications issued by them. Universities have their own equivalence committees for this purpose and the Association of Indian Universities (AIU) also deal with such cases, and all conventional universities by and large follow it. For the distance education students this is where the problem remains, as some universities refuse to give equivalence to open university degrees. The DEC may take steps in this front in collaboration with the UGC and AIU to create an 'equivalence framework' so that the students of distance education are not put to disadvantage. For employment, the distance education degrees offered by universities, in accordance with their Act/ Statutes/ Ordinances and duly offered in accordance to the guidelines/approval of the relevant statutory bodies, should be recognized by all employers. Otherwise, it would be discrimination.

Students in the Distance Education system should not worry about the validity of their degrees, but should worry more about their studies/learning per se. If you work hard and study to demand more from the institutions and teachers, you will get it. It is your performance that will speak for the system and bring in more legitimacy and respect.

Note: No offense is intended to any individual or institution. Apologies for any unintended interpretation by the readers.

Indian Journal of Open Learning

2009-02-06T12:42:00.002+05:30

The Indian Journal of Open Learning is an internationally peer reviewed Journal published by the Indira Gandhi National Open University since 1992. The Journal shall now be available on a delayed open access basis, and potential authors are requested to submit their research papers for review and publication online. The Journal intends to disseminate information about theory, practice and research in the field of open and distance learning including correspondence and multi-media education, educational technology and communication, independent and experiential learning and other innovative forms of education; and to provide a forum to researchers for debate across the world on these areas of concern with particular reference to India and other developing nations.

Sanjaya

My Bookmarks

2009-01-01T00:47:00.002+05:30

There is a nice way to create word mash-up like the above. I used the Wordle service to create the above for my delicious bookmarks. You may like to see these.

Happy New Year 2009 to all readers of this Blog...

Sanjaya

E-Learn 2008: A Brief Report

2008-12-24T12:09:00.011+05:30

I am pleased to post here a breif report of my participation in the E-Learn 2008 held at Las Vegas, USA from 17-21 November 2008.

Pre-Conference Symposium on “E-Learning in Asia”
Date: 2008/11/17
This pre-conference was the highlight of the conference, as it could enable a group of people in Asia who are engaged in the cutting-edge of applications of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) and e-Learning to be at one place. There were 12 presentations from Korea, Japan, China, Malaysia, Thailand, India, Singapore, Philippines, Taiwan, including two research presentations from USA and Australia covering Asian e-learning. I presented the Indian scenario with a focus on IGNOU’s online learning activity. The presentation is available at my Slideshare site.

The overall scenario of Asian e-learning shows rapid growth in infrastructure including broadband, more use of blended learning, use of web 2.0 technologies with an overall interest to reach the unreached. Countries like Japan, Singapore and Taiwan have done tremendous development with the use of e-technologies for teaching and learning, and there are lessons to be learnt for all of us. While technology is available, there is also a need to train all the stakeholders both on technology and learning related issues.

Date: 2008/11/18
The conference started with a brief introduction by the organizers without much fun fare. Richard Beraniuk of the Rice University presented the first Keynote on “Open access education: Building communities and sharing knowledge”. He presented the case of Connextions as a platform for open education resources. In his presentation he emphasized liberation of text pages from books to page, shelf to global interconnected repository, closed to open source, costly to free, and slow production to fast production and revision. He emphasized the quality issues in Open Educational Resources (OER) and the use of “Lenses” to determine context specific quality.

On this day, I attended other parallel sessions related to Wikibook development experiences, use of e-learning for transformative learning and activities of the National Centre for Supercomputing Applications at University of Illinois (this is the place where Mosaic, the first web browser was developed).

Date: 2008/11/19
The Keynote presentation was by Mark David Milliron, CEO of Catalyze Learning International, who talked about new generation of learning, emphasizing the use of game-based learning, social networking, mobile phones, high impact videos, etc. According to him, we all working in the field of technology in education should stop talking about “Technology will improve learning”. Rather, we should tell technology can improve learning, if designed and applied well, he added.
On this day, I attended other parallel sessions including an award winning presentation from another Indian participant (Mr. Popat Tambade), and other invited lectures. Associate Professor David Wiley presented his thoughts on “Openness and the disaggregated future of education”. He emphasized that the world is changing from analog to digital, tethered to mobile, isolated to connected, generic to personal, consuming to creating and closed to open. In such a situation how higher education can remain unchanged, he asked. Today, if you look at the internet traffic the top 50 sites are where people can share, he added. In view of all these he called for policy reforms in higher education to address the emerging needs of the society and the learners in an open society. He gave the example of Open High School of Utah, as a change model based on use of Open Content. In the process he emphasized that “in order to change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete”.

In the evening, there was another presentation by Lucifer Chu of Taiwan on OOPS project in which he is engaged in localizing the MIT Opencourseware materials into Chinese.
I chaired a session covering here presentations on bookmarking/tagging, good practices in e-learning and maintaining excelling in teaching online.

Date: 2008/11/20
Prof. Roy Pea of Stanford University presented the Keynote on “Fostering Learning in a Networked World” based on the report of the Taskforce on Cyber Learning of the National Science Foundation. The main point of his presentation was that the 21st century learning has to be mediation-based situated in a learning ecology framework. In the process he said that we must remember the change surrounding us, particularly the “always on” mobile, location content GPS services, open platforms, could computing, immersive technologies, open educational resources, and participatory media culture. He emphasized that the participatory nature of media brings in new complexity in the teaching learning process.

Margaret Driscoll, of IBM in an invited lecture on “Recent trends in Content development” identified three different types of instructional design approaches: course-centric, knowledge centric and Do-It-Yourself mode, and analysed these from the point of role of learners, organization and cost/funding. She said the trend is towards the use of instructional design by assignment, meaning that ID specialists are more and more looked upon as support agent to subject specialist who does the instructional design by themselves as assignments. She also said rapid e-learning or rapid ID is the order of the day, and no organisation is ready for undertaking a more rigorous process of design.

I attended the panel of the newly released handbook on e-Learning, and received the book award for the best question asked in the session.

George Siemens from the University of Manitoba presented an invited lecture on participatory trends in media and education, based on his developing theory of “Connectivism”. Within this, he also talked of the tensions in education: formal/informal, epistemology/ontology, structure/exploratory, open/closed, pace/depth, reputation/accreditation. He presented the lecture using a new technology called “PersonalBrain”, and also talked of technologies such as Digg, eHarmony, Diigo, LiveMesh, Twitter, etc.

Date: 2008/11/21
The Keynote on the last day was presented by Dr. Ellen Wagner, Founder of Sonoma Partners, who talked about the gaps in sustaining e-learning innovations. She said the gaps are between innovations and implementations, between research and practice, between academic institutions and corporations, between product and solutions, and between traditional e-learning and emerging e-learning.

On this day I attended other parallel sessions and presented my paper on “Using Asynchronous Conferences to Support Wiki Skills Training and Development of Distance Learning Lessons”. The presentation was well received with interest on the support and the framework developed for analyzing support.

Lessons and Reflections:
The conference was attended by over 1100 delegated from over 65 countries. However, there were only 2 Indian delegates. It was reported that the conference attracted over 987 proposals and only 391 were accepted. Of these there were about 20% dropouts as seen from cancelled presentations. It is interesting to note that such absentees are noted by the organizers systematically to discourage such paper presenters. The whole even organization was maintained using technology and thus, there were very few hands engaged as volunteers. There were no lunches served making the conference a tidy one engaging only in academic work.
Academically, the keynote and invited presentations were the highlight of this conference, and the opportunity to discuss issues of common concerns in such a gathering is highly contagious for creative works. Personally, the conference was a satisfying event for me in my career goals, as I could share my ideas to peers who are working in similar areas. As my presentation was on Wiki related topic, it was highly satisfying to see so many presentations on wikis and the emphasis by invited speakers on open education, open educational resources, etc. establishing that my current research interest is in line with the latest and emerging area.

Acknowledgements:
My sincere thanks to Prof. V.N. R. Pillai, Vice Chancellor, IGNOU and Chairperson and members of the Travel Grants Committee and other officials and staff for making it possible for me to attend the conference.

I am also thankful to the Association for the Advancement of Computers in Education (AACE) for inviting me to talk about “E-Learning in India” and for waiver of registration fees for the conference.

Online Training on Wiki Skills and SLM Development

2008-09-26T22:37:00.002+05:30

I served as the facilitator for an eight weeks online training on development of self-learning materials from 4th August to 26th September 2008. On completion of the training, I am a relaxed person. It used to be almost 6 hours work every day for the training at different time of the day -- even at mid night to support trainees. I enjoyed the online training, learned a lot as a facilitator, and I am happy that 20 out of the 35 registered participants completed the training successfully. See my reflective report on the training, and browse the workshop site to see evaluation report, workshop strategies, the interactions in the Google Group and the actual development of self-learning materials. This was probably the first ever online training in any Indian University. I intend to do more of this type of training and also take up other areas in future. I almost stopped blogging in the last 2-3 months due to my continuous involvement in this training... and now hope to continue blogging regularly...

Sanjaya

Connected Academic

2008-07-04T15:50:00.001+05:30

I took the Connected Academic Quiz at GoToQuiz and my score is as follows:

The connected academic Your Result: Connected academic You are the future! You've taken openness, connectedness and 2.0ness to heart. You are an asset to your organisation. I would be happy to be your Facebook friend.
Mildly connected academic
Unconnected academic
The connected academic Create MySpace Quizzes

Sanjaya

Connectivism and Connective Knowledge

2008-06-20T10:13:00.004+05:30

There is an online course coming up on "Connectivism and Connective Knowledge" to be facilitated by two of the best brains on online learning--George Siemens and Stephen Downes. Already 650 individuals have joined this course, that is going to start in September. The course related information are avialable at the following:

I have joined this new learning opportunity, and look forward to this new world of connective knowledge and network-based learning technology applications. Though, I have been using a lot of Web 2.0 applications, I look forward to this online course to learn and share my own experiences. I am also facilitating a WikiEducator and GoogleGroup based online course on Self-Learning Material Development to start from 4th August, which will run for 8 weeks.

Sanjaya

Chaos in Open Learning

2008-06-10T14:25:00.002+05:30

The Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) was established in 1985 by an Act of Parliament with dual mandate to maintain standard of distance education in the country and also offer courses and programme at various levels. Today, the distance education scenario of the country covers one national open university, 14 state open universities and more than 150 distance education institutes in other universities. Establishment of a private open university is also in the process by the Symbiosis group. There is also a distance education bill awaiting approval of the Parliament to separate the Distance Education Council (DEC) from IGNOU.

The 10th Plan of the Govt. of India envisaged 40% of enrollment in the distance open system, but grossly failed to achieve it. Again the target has been kept at the same level in the 11th Plan period, and the IGNOU has started some concrete steps to achieve the targets. Once such step is the Convergence Scheme that intends to tap existing colleges and universities to join the distance education bandwagon through various schemes. Notwithstanding the popularity of distance education in India, the growth is chaotic without any direction, as the intention of starting distance education programmes and courses has changed from providing access and democratization of higher education to generating more resources. Thus, the issue of quality and accreditation still fall short of national expectations.

Though the DEC of IGNOU was established much before the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC), it has yet to develop a credible process of quality assurance in distance education. Course and programmes are being offered by various institutions without having core faculty. Any one can develop any course/programme in any discipline and offer it to generate additional resources in the guise of increasing access and innovation. Feasibility and sustainability of programmes are rarely looked into, and thereby compromising the quality of services provided to the student community. Since the learners are dispersed, they can not form groups or associations to fight for their problems.

Distance education is also being used to provide a back door route to institutions that can't offer “degrees”. So, face-to-face education is being certified as distance education through “collaborative models”. Without considering the mandate of democratizing education, small pockets of elitist education centres are being promoted that generate more resources in monetary terms. Interestingly, as per the UGC Act, sub-section 3 of Section 22, nomenclature of the programmes offered should be as per the approved specifications notified in the Gazette of India. A quick comparison of the list of programmes offered through distance education and the UGC list would reveal many anomalies.

Distance education is primarily a technology-mediated system of teaching and learning, and IGNOU is a World leader in this field to use TV, Radio and Satellite in delivery of instructions. The EduSat was launched in September 2004 to provide interactive education. But, even after completing the half life of its operation, its full potential is yet to be unleashed. What goes on regularly is routine “talking heads” without viewers. No interaction of what-so-ever-worth takes place in these EduSat sessions. No learning management system is in place to provide additional data services other than televised lessons.

Recently, the teachers in open universities in the country, and particularly at IGNOU are more concerned about an administrative confusion created on – who is a teacher? This is a simple question as far as the large number of colleges and universities are concerned. The teachers are engaged in 'direct teaching' to students in the classrooms. With the decision of the MHRD to provide 27% reservations to OBC students in educational institutions, and as per the recommendations of the Oversight Committee, the retirement age of teachers was recently increased to 65 from 62 in the centrally funded educational institutions, including IGNOU. The intention of such a move was to accommodate more students on the campus and retain talent. Strictly going by the wording of MHRD and UGC, it is only applicable to institutions offering face-to-face education. However, at IGNOU, the teaching roles are different with different designations (including Lecturer, Reader, Professor, Regional Director/Dy. Director, Asst. Director/ Asst. Regional Director, Research Officer, Analyst, etc.). Within the technology-mediate teaching learning system followed in distance education, the role of a teacher is to organize the curricular transactions through course development, lesson writing, media production, script writing, synchronous interaction in broadcast sessions, counselling and guidance, learner performance assessment, programme evaluation and research, and to perform all other activities that are necessary and conducive to student learning. Not necessarily every teacher does all the tasks all the time. Depending on the demand of the work place, different tasks are performed by the teachers at different point of time. None however, do face-to-face teaching to a large extent, except for a small number of trainers. Now, those not having the designation as Lecturer/Reader/Professor are not only being denied increase in the retirement age, but are also not given promotion from reader level to professor level. The confusion and debate continues on who is a teacher, and probably needs national level debate on the roles and functions of teachers at large.

The situation prevailing in open learning in India is really chaotic, if we look beyond the superficial numbers. The number of students suffering from poor service is a matter of concern to national development. The National Knowledge Commission recently recommended that Distance Education be recognized as a discipline in its own right; it is not just a mode alone. While this is a laudable recommendation, a Distance Education Commission may be established at the earliest to revamp open learning in the country and to create a system that will enable sustainable and qualitative developments in a planned and systematic manner.

SMS in Teleconference Sessions of IGNOU

2008-04-30T15:52:00.001+05:30

At Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) one-way video and two-way audio teleconference is being used for more than a decade now. With a modest experiment in 1993, this system has been made a regular event in the teaching-learning process of IGNOU since 1995 with various schools and divisions using the facility available at Electronic Media Production Centre (EMPC) to varying degrees. Realizing the power of the satellite technology, the University has introduced and deployed EduSat in the teaching-learning system with the support of Govt. of India in 2004. This has added another dimension to the technology-enabled teaching and learning in the University. Besides other pedagogic attributes of the TV and video, the unique attribute of the teleconference system is to provide ‘real-time’ interaction between students and teachers and amongst students. The effective utilization of the system can be assessed from the level of interactivity. If there is no interaction, it can be safely said that the system is not working as envisaged. Though, teleconference sessions design, prior notice to the students in the programme guide, annual planning of lectures, integrating teleconference in the instructional design and curriculum are important issues to make the system more effective, some ground reality check is essential to use the system more effectively.

Experiences show that most of the teleconference sessions are not attended by the students due to various reasons. One significant reason cited by many teachers and students is the timing of the sessions. Though there would always be a problem of timing as teleconference is a synchronous system, we can still make this system more relevant and useful by some systematic planning and innovation. Here, I would like to suggest the use of SMS technology using mobile phones. All the Regional Centres and reception centres of teleconference should be given a mobile phone to SMS to a 4 or 5 digit number or a regular 10 digit number at the beginning of each session. Thus, within 5 minutes of a teleconference session, the resource person(s) is/are in a position to know the presence of students in the session in various regional centres. If no students are present, the session can safely be stopped, without wasting resources as the purpose of teleconference is to provide interaction, and not to record video programmes. Talking to the camera without any students is just to satisfy our own self and justify that we are doing something of value. But, in reality, this is of no use that we all know very well. The use of SMS within 5 minutes of each session will also ensure effective monitoring of the receiving ends. Instant data can be gathered on the use of teleconference at the receiving ends. These collected data can be used for decision-making at the highest level to oversee and plan for effective utilization of teleconference.

WikiEducators

2008-04-01T10:18:00.003+05:30

For some time now, I have been engaged in experimenting with the use of WikiEducator, a platform and a community of educators engaged in creation of Open Educational Resources. The platform is powered by MediaWiki, and supported by the Commonwealth of Learning, Vancouver, Canada. The platform is growing fast, and recently, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation has given a grant to train 2500 individuals in 52 Commonwealth countries to develop wiki skills and create a lesson each. In the process of promoting this goal, we are in the process of creating many resources, and recently experimented with a low cost approach to video lesson development using Kaltura Collaborative Video. The first lesson on how to create an account on Wikieducator is shown in the video below:

http://www.kaltura.com/index.php/widget/313428/-1/6/4/-1/YTo0OntzOjQ6ImJhc2UiO3M6Mzg6Imh0dHA6Ly93d3cud2lraWVkdWNhdG9yLm9yZy9pbmRleC5waHAvIjtzOjM6ImFkZCI7czo0OToiU3BlY2lhbDpLYWx0dXJhQ29udHJpYnV0aW9uV2l6YXJkP2tzaG93X2lkPTMxMzQyOCI7czo0OiJlZGl0IjtzOjQyOiJTcGVjaWFsOkthbHR1cmFWaWRlb0VkaXRvcj9rc2hvd19pZD0zMTM0MjgiO3M6NToic2hhcmUiO3M6NDM6Imh0dHA6Ly93d3cud2lraWVkdWNhdG9yLm9yZy9WaWRlb19UdXRvcmlhbHMiO30="/>

File Conversion

2008-03-04T00:27:00.001+05:30

Do you need converting a Word file into PDF? Want a PDF to be converted back to Word? There are many web-based services available free. Check out the following:

Zamzar is a free online file conversion facility that has tons of options.
Lettos is in beta version but has many facilities convert between open office format and Windows formats.
Doc2PDF converts many different formats to PDF.

Happy converting...

Six Gowns of Distance Educators

2008-03-01T12:00:00.002+05:30

Teachers in the distance education systems perform various roles and tasks. In spite of their complex responsibilities, the role of teachers in distance education is considered to be of low esteem and respect. This is partly due to the implementation of the system of teaching-learning in many so called distance teaching institutions that hardly care for quality and and the philosophy of the system. Most of the times, distance educators face problem of parity and recognition of their work as teaching. At some places the non-teaching staff also question the status of teachers in distance education. Being involved in the distance education system for the last 14 years, I tried to analyze the roles performed by the teachers in the distance education system. I realized that there are six Gowns that a teacher in distance education system put on depending on the time and context – the gown of a teacher, a technologist, a counsellor, an evaluator, a researcher, and overall a manager. It is the last gown that is more problematic to the teaching professionals, as teaching is only considered to be something that is done in the four walls of a classroom, and all other managerial activities are performed by other staff. In distance education, the managerial gown is put on by the teachers most of the times, leading to a thinking that distance educators are not teachers in real sense of the term. In reality, the meaning of the teacher is changing, and therefore, we need to look into these six gowns that a teacher in distance education put on from time to time. In fact, a true teacher in distance education is one who switch gowns at ease, and perform multiple roles with care, and passion. Let's look at these Gowns:

Teacher: This is the core of a distance educator, and is the primary gown. As teacher's tasks involve, curriculum planning and design, and development/ writing of lessons in multiple media formats. Thinking about instructions and instructional design is part of the activities of a teacher in distance education. What subject can be taught though which media, and what support are required for the learners are decisions a teacher need to make. How best to present the materials that a learner can study the content and achieve the intended objectives is a matter of concerns for a teacher in distance education. Teaching is performed through a variety of media – print, audio, video, computers, Internet, assignments, tutoring, etc.

Technologist: Every distance educator needs to be a technologist. Distance education by definition is a system of teaching and learning facilitated predominantly by the use of technology. In order to be effective, a teacher needs to put on the gown of a technologist from time to time while developing materials in print as well as other digital media such as audio, video, and computers. Understanding of technology to a reasonable extent and ability to work comfortably with technology to teach subject matter are important in distance education. Teaching with the use of a television camera in asynchronous and synchronous manner require different types of skills, and a good distance teacher need these special skills. The advent of new technologies have added additional responsibilities, and teachers in the distance education system need to remain update all the time. This need not be the case for the teachers in the classroom bound system.

Counsellor: In a classroom bound system, the role of a teacher is mostly to transact the curriculum content. In contrast, a teacher in the distance education system needs to be a counsellor, who has skills of handling disadvantaged students with varieties of problems. A good distance teacher is a counsellor who has warmth, acceptance, genuineness and empathy. Apart from helping students to understand the content, a distance teacher also need to understand the problems of the learners and accommodate them within the framework of the rules and regulations of the institution. Good counselling is key to student success and retention in the distance education system. Most of the poor performance of the distance teaching institutions are due to poor counselling and guidance of learners.

Evaluator: All teachers do evaluation, but distance teachers do more than evaluation. They need to have good monitoring skills, especially to monitor the delivery of their courses and programmes. A teacher's role in the distance education system does not end after development of the learning materials, they need to monitor the delivery of the programmes/courses to maintain the quality. Teaching through assessment of students' work is unique to distance education to have two-way communication and interaction. Providing teaching type comments in the students' work/assignments is vital to help them learn.

Researcher: All teachers need to be researcher – to do research and to supervise research. The objective of research is to generate new knowledge and have insights into existing problems. Distance educators, apart from doing research in their own disciplines also need to do research in the systemic aspects of distance education, especially to improve their own understanding and develop themselves as reflective practitioners. This aspect is not taken care of in many distance education institutions when they try to identify separate cadre for doing systemic research. Instead enough opportunities need to be provided to the distance teachers to conduct research as part of their teaching gown. A gown of a researcher is a difficult one, and we seldom put this on.

Manager: The managerial gown is the one that is seen most of the times. A distance educator performs the role of manager doing everything from planning, organizing, staffing, directing, coordinating, reporting and budgeting. This gown in what people see, as the other gowns are put on to limited effect. Planning for meetings, coordinating with the course writers, expert committee members, counsellors, study centre staff, preparing budget for courses/ programmes, organizing counselling schedules, identifying cousnellors and other related staff, directing various activities involved in the delivery, reporting the progress to the management, and many other activities fall within the roles of a manager in the distance education system. As teachers we do all of these!

Whatever may be the perception about distance educators, it is true that they switch gowns from time to time. The Managerial gown is probably more visible, and therefore, it needs more proactive action on the part of the distance educators to put on other GOWNS more frequently.

Special Thanks to Dr. Pankaj Khare for the graphics on this post.

Researching Distance and Online Learning

2008-02-22T00:57:00.002+05:30

During February 20-22, 2008 I served as a facilitator for a workshop on "Researching Distance and Online Learning" organized by STRIDE, IGNOU. I had two presentations on the theme.

1. Research Areas in Distance Educaiton

| View | Upload your own

2. Online Research

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You may like to go through these. Also, during the workshop I used the SurveyMonkey question builder tool for the workshop evaluation. In all the workshop was a great learning experince for me and I got an opportunity to re-visit some of my old ideas.

More later...

Web 2.0

2008-01-20T17:24:00.000+05:30

I have a presentation on Web 2.0 in the Refresher Programme in Distance Education, 7-28 January 2008 organized by Staff Training and Research Institute of Distance Education. This programme is the first refresher programme in distance education in the discipline of distance education organized by IGNOU-STRIDE. More than 10 years back the CIEFL, Hyderabad organized a refresher programme in distance education. I am one of the Programme Coordinators of the 21 days long programme. The programme has 3 components: advanced distance education theoretical knowledge, Audio and video production, and e-technologies. As part of the third component we have planned to develop a lab in the IGNOU Convention Centre, and provide pactical hands on experiences. During the planning process of this programme my office computer and personal laptop both went out of order, and I have virtually no access to computer, and presentation software. Then I came accross ZOHO.COM and I created my presentation online. Great experience -- to prepare for Web 2.0 presentation using web 2.0 technology.

In the session, I intend to ask the participants to view some of the online videos individually, and then discuss the concept in pair, and join the google egroup of the Refresher programme to highlight their learning points and seek clarification. As a facilitator, I will use the egroup to provide support and clarify doubts. This will be a process of constructivist approach to learning a new concept, and also a process of co-creation of knowledge on how web 2.0 can be used in distance education.

The presentation will be shown at the end to the participants online. It is available at: Link . See the presentation here, below:

ISTD-Vivekanand National Award

2007-12-10T13:12:00.000+05:30

I am happy to share with the readers of this blog about the ISTD-Vivekananda National Award for Excellence in HRD and Training 2006-2007 received by me (the author of teachknowlogist) on 8th December 2007 at the Satyam School of Leadership, HiTech City, Hederabad in the concluding session of the 38th National Convention of Indian Society for Training and Development (ISTD) from Sh. S.K. Joshi, IAS, Secretary, Dept. of IT, Govt. of AP. The award is given to recognize young trainers with at least 5 years of experience in conducting/organizing training programmes. ISTD, established in 1969, is the national professional agency to promote human resource development and training. It also offers an 18-months Diploma in Training and Development through distance mode. The award is instituted in the memory of (Late) Brig. Inder Sethi, AVSM.

An award is a ‘Reward’ and ‘Recognition’ that brings in more ‘Responsibilities’. I am humbled by the choice of the ISTD and its honourable jury members; and would like to take this opportunity to thank them all. I would also like to assure ISTD and the training professionals that I would continue to do my best in the interest of the training profession, and strive to meet/ exceed the expectations of the professional peers.

Thank You.

Virtual Open University of Orissa

2007-12-05T12:31:00.000+05:30

From November 24-26, 2007 I attended the 13th Annual Conference of the Indian Distance Education Association (IDEA) at Bhubaneswar, Orissa, India. The Directorate of Distance and Continuing Education (DDCE), Utkal University, Bhubanesar organized the conference. Bhubaneswar is a city of temples that houses numerous monuments of the era of King Ashoka. The Khandagiri and Udayagiri caves, Sun temple of Konark, Sri Jagannath temple of Puri, and Chilka Lake are also some of the important places adjoining the capital city of Orissa, which is also one of the modern planned cities of the Independent India. The conference timing was also during the Puri Beach Festival organized to promote tourism in the state. The weather was good, and the atmosphere right for academic deliberations (See Orissa tourism site for more info on tourist interest in Orissa).

The host, Utkal University, is one of the oldest universities in the country and first university of Orissa, was established in 1943. With a sprawling campus of more than 400 acres of land, and 28 postgraduate teaching departments, the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC), Bangalore accredited the University with B++ Grade in 2004. The University Evening College established in 1962 was converted into Directorate of Correspondence Courses in 1975, which in 1996 changed to DDCE. It offers a wide range of programmes at graduate and postgraduate levels in both liberal and professional areas.

Prof. V.N. Rajasekharan Pillai, Vice Chancellor of Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) and Chiarman, Distance Educaiton Council (DEC) inaugurated the conference on 24th November 2007. Dr. R. Sreedhar, Director of the Commonwealth Educational Media Centre for Asia (CEMCA), New Delhi delivered the Prof. G. Ram Reddy Memorial Lecture. On the first day of the conference there was a session on “Open and Distance Learning in Orissa and Orissa State Open University”. Prof. Susmit Pani, Director, DDCE, Utkal University presented a theme paper and emphasized the need to have Open University in Orissa to promote ‘Open Education’. On the invitation of the organizers, I served as a discussant and panelist to comment and reflect on the thematic presentation. I would like to share my views here with a wider audience on the topic.

Prof. Pani deserves to be congratulated by all to have brought a much forgotten dimension in his theme paper -- the issue of open education in open universities. While there are large number of dropouts at the school level and +2 level, and in most degree colleges a large numbers of seats are vacant, there is still need for having Open University in Orissa. Prof. Pani also deliberated on the models that could be followed to start such an initiative, and gave the example of Karnataka State Open University, and Tamilnadu State Open University as examples. However, he probably favoured that the Orissa State Open University may be started by converting the existing DDCE into a full-fledged university and by merging the distance education activities of other universities in Orissa. Interestingly, except Utkal University, other DDCE do not have full-time staff.

The Orissa State Open University (OSOU), if at all comes up, would have the distinction of being the University with longest time in making! In fact, on the invitation of the Govt. of Orissa, A team led by Prof. Ram Takwale, the then Vice Chancellor of Orissa prepared the blueprint in 1997. It is now more than 10 years that the University is still being discussed! That blueprint may not work for Orissa now, but what is important is --providing better access to educational opportunities to the people of Orissa. The biggest problem in the state is high dropout rate in schools and colleges. The unsuccessful may be given a second chance through appropriate open educational opportunities. In fact, Open Universities, as the name suggest should have programmes that offer open learning opportunities. Interestingly, Open Universities in the country are closed with so many rigidities of the face-to-face teaching universities. Any new Open University in Orissa should have more of open learning opportunities – provide access to the disadvantaged, economically poor, marginalized groups, school dropouts; and also improve the quality of education through the rightful use of educational technologies. Therefore, in the new ever-changing societal environment, it is important to re-think Open University in Orissa. A conventional Open University may not be sustainable in the state without closing down other so-called distance education provisions. This is a difficult concept, as other universities may not like to forgo their revenue-generating unit. With Orissa being a leader in technology use (Country’s first Cable Internet was probably available in Bhubaneswar), is appropriate to advocate for an Open University that is virtual in nature and operates heavily on technology and through collaborations of existing institutions.

The Virtual Open University of Orissa (VOUO) would be successful, if it is more open and offer programmes across boundaries through e-learning mode. The University should be a facilitating agency to provide e-learning opportunities to the existing institutions, and collaborate with them to offer its programmes, besides planning for more open learning, vocational courses and programmes for the needy and poor. In order to develop a learning society, we need educational institutions that promote and foster open learning, and it is in this direction all concerned must think of Orissa Open University as a platform to provide open education. However, there is always the question of Govt. funding and whether the state Govt. can start another university with low funding. The VOUO may be started as a new Public Private Partnership (PPP) model, and being technology-driven many private agencies would be interested to join hands with the Govt. to start a new enterprise that can change the educational landscape of Orissa and may be the whole of the Nation. However, it is important that this should happen as fast as possible.

Postscript: While in Orissa, I had the opportunity to reflect on the distance education development in the province. The three old universities (Utkal, Berhampur, and Samblapur) and the two new universities (Fakir Mohan, and North Orissa) are having distance education units as Directorate of Distance and Continuing Education (DDCE). This gives some non-traditional opportunities to these universities to provide some interesting educational provisions that can’t be explained by conventional knowledge of distance education. The students of DDCE, Utkal University are mostly young and fresher. Number of seats is fixed, and they do not have study centres. They have outsourced some of the study material development to private publishers. On the other hand, DDCE, Sambalpur University has tied-up with a private agency to provide all its educational services and only acts a curriculum setting and certifying agency. The programmes on offer are called off-campus programmes and thus, classes are held in study centers regularly. The Fakir Mohan Univesity has acquired some of the materials of IGNOU to kick-start their programmes, but are also in the process of developing their own courses and programmes by involving subject matter experts and distance education specialists. They have been conducting workshops on distance education regularly, and are more serious about quality of educational materials.

These practices are quite different than what is considered to be a true distance education provider. The use of ‘continuing education’ in their nomenclature enables these institutions to offer ‘off-campus’, ‘evening’ face-to-face teaching and learning. The current text-book knowledge about distance education would reject all these as probably something other than distance education. However, these educational offerings are meant to increase access to education. Quality may be questioned, but who cares as long as Universities operate these under their legal framework, and as long as Distance Education Council certifies them. There are more inside stories that need critical examination in Orissa, whether it is outsourcing of textbooks from private publishers or making whole educational offering through a private partner. Intellectuals of the state need to think on the current practices, and take decisions that are in the best interest of the State, Nation, and the Learning Society.

The intention in this postscript is not to be judgmental, but to be reflective. Readers are welcome to share their views further to debate on the current developments in the state of distance education in Orissa.

Open, Distance and Online Learning Curriculum at Master’s Level

2007-11-07T23:18:00.000+05:30

I am conducting an international Delphi study to outline a curriculum for a Master’s level program in “Open, Distance and Online Learning”. The idea to conduct such a study came from the fact that there are considerable variations in the programs offered by various universities around the world on distance education. The curriculum for IGNOU’s masters program on distance education is very different from UKOU, Deakin University and Athabasca University. If distance education is a discipline worthy of systematic study and research, the contents of such programs should be more or less similar with minor variations to accommodate contextual, and cultural requirements. This study is a three phase one, and at the end of the study it is expected to have a consensus list of content areas that could be developed in detail to include in a masters level program. In the phase one, I requested a large group (above 500 persons) of experts to list at lest 10 topics of their choice to be included in an international masters in Open, Distance and Online Learning. The results of phase one shall be subjected to a web-based survey. The list of topics generated (with multiple responses) is as follows:

E-learning (13.84%): Includes virtual learning environments; learning management systems; learning objects; computer mediated communication; open educational resources; e-learning standards; online facilitation; online assessment; designing online learning; online communities; computer supported collaborative learning; online tutoring; web-authoring; web accessibility; digital divide; web 2.0, mobile learning, etc.
Material Development and Production (I3.29%): Including writing aims and objectives; preparing activities; converting materials to online; editing; printing.
Instructional Design (10.1%): Includes theories of learning; pedagogy vs. andragogy; self-directed learning, autonomous learning; learning styles; models of instructional design.
Learner Support (9.67%): Includes understanding distance learners; academic advising; retention; mentoring; building relationships; types of learner support.
Foundations of Distance Education (9.2%): Includes theories of distance education; philosophical, psychological and sociological foundations; history, growth and developments; distance education and national developments; distance education in the developing world, models of distance education; globalization and distance education; distance education for special needs.
Educational Communication Technologies (7.69%): Includes technology integration; synchronous and asynchronous technologies; emerging technologies; satellite communication; Interactive technologies; radio, TV.
Research Methodology (7.47%): Includes research in distance education, research as reflective practice.
Management of Distance Education (6.81%): Including change management; policy development, leadership, marketing; resource sharing; project management.
Assessment of Learner Performance (5.93%): Including feedback to learners.
Quality Assurance and Program Evaluation (4.83%): Includes quality standards; benchmarks, performance indicators; national and international scenarios; quality assurance agencies; tools of quality assurance; evaluation of programs.
Curriculum Design and Development (4.39%): Including course design.
Staff Training and Development (2.85%): Including competencies of distance educators, online teachers; supporting tutors; training techniques and approaches.
Cost and Economics of Distance and Online Learning (2.63%): Including budgeting, economies of scale.
Educational Multimedia (2.19%): Includes audio, video preparation; interactive multimedia development.
Project Work (2.4%): A research report/ dissertation on a topic/ problem.
Copyright and ethical issues (1.97%): Includes copyright laws; digital rights management; ethics in distance education; open source and open content issues.
Case Studies (1.53%): Includes application of distance education in various levels such as Open schooling; open basic education; technical and vocational education training; tertiary education, non-formal education, corporate education.

In the web-based survey, it is now being requested to all the agreed respondents to validate the topics by scoring on a three-point scale (1= It is not necessary to be included in a curriculum of an International Masters level program in Distance Education; 2= It is useful, but not necessary that this topic be included; 3= It is essential to include this topic in the curriculum). Results of Round 2 will follow after the survey.

Click Here to take survey of Phase 2

IMPACT Framework for Media and Technology Choice

2007-09-30T11:50:00.000+05:30

Choice of media and technology for distance education delivery has always been a matter of great interest and concern for policy-makers and scholars of distance education. This is so from two angle: one that is purely from the viewpoint of learning effectiveness through specific media use, and the other from the pragmatic viewpoint to manage learning environments. Though there are enough studies showing on "no significant difference", this is also a debatable issue on account of the methods utilized and the data on which the conclusions are based. Some recent works in this field also demonstrate that there exists some "significant difference" in learning from different technologies and media. In distance education, "use of technical media" is a basic component of the whole delivery system. Because of this, often decision-makers jump on to use technology without thinking of the contexts of the use of technology. In such a situation, technology use policies are ad hoc, and any generic policy without taking into the context only adds to poor implementation and high level of dissatisfaction and criticisms. We can see many examples of it in India.

For sometime now, the Bates's criteria for decision-making on use of media and technology have been in use in many institutions. The A(ccess), C(ost), T(eaching function), I(nteractivity), O(rganizational issues), N(ovelty), S(peed) framework (called as ACTIONS) is highly useful. I propose a similar media and technology choice framework (called IMPACT) for insitutions to take course-wise/ programme-wise decision on deployment of technology.

Interaction: Does the technology/medium provide interactions of different kinds (asynchrnonous/synchronous; learner-learner/learner-content/learner-teacher, etc)?

Motivation: How does the technology/medium motivate the users (students, teachers, administrators)?

Pedagogy: How does the technology/medium amenable to different pedagogical designs (case study, collaboration, learning by doing, self study and discovery learning, etc.)?

Access: Is the technology/medium accessible to the target group of learners?

Cost: How cost-effective is the technology/medium? Is it affordable to the learners?

Training: How much training does the technology/medium require for the students and teachers to use it effectively? How steep is the 'learning curve'?

The IMPACT model analysis will help us to identify the strengths and weaknesses of a technology/medium, based on which we can take appropriate decisions. In each of the category of the IMPACT, we can add additional questions to make it more robust. This model is just an idea and definitely needs research to prove its utility.

Commensalism in Open and Distance Education

2007-09-26T20:42:00.000+05:30

The Open and Distance Education (ODE) system in India and elsewhere works as a system supported by the existing educational infrastructure of the country. The cost-effectiveness of the system is due to less investment by the ODE institutions in infrastructure development and dependency on the conventional educational institutions for organizing support services. From my experience, I tried to analyze the current practices in collaboration with various types of institutions by the National Open University in India.

The Study Centres of IGNOU, by and large, are in the conventional face-to-face institutions that provide a few rooms within their premises to run IGNOU activities. The head of the institution is provided with some remuneration, and all the staff members of the Study Centre are normally drawn from the host institutions, and are provided remuneration for the part-time services rendered. Besides, there are Programme Study Centres, where specific services are offered to IGNOU students and the host institutions are reimbursed on per student basis. The faculty strength of the University is less in comparison to the number of centres and the student strengths. The courses are developed with the support of University and College teachers in other institutions. Mostly, these teachers are experts in their specific areas and are considered national resource. In percentage terms a significant proportion of the learning materials are written by outside experts. They are also compensated for their efforts. The academic tutoring activities are taken place at the study centres, where approved academic counsellors provide subject-specific guidance and assess student assignments. The tutors are also drawn from the conventional system and are part-time staff. They are also separately compensated for the counselling and assessment of the student assignments.

As a student of Biology in my college days, I recall the relationships between living organisms and try to apply the same to the institutions that are live according to social systems theory. There are three types of relationships in the living organisms: Symbiotic, Parasitic, Commensalism.

A symbiotic relationship is one where both the organisms of different species mutually benefit from the relationship.

A relationship in commensalism category is one where two organisms remain together but only one benefits and the other is neither harmed nor helped.

A parasitic relationship is one where two unrelated organisms co-exist together, one benefits from the relationship, while the other is harmed.

What is the type of relationship in the inter-institutional relationship between IGNOU and the other institutions?

If we look at the study centres of IGNOU, what benefits the host organization receives from IGNOU? Virtually nothing. IGNOU is benefited tremendously through the support of its part-time staff. There is no mutual benefit, but there is also no harm to any party. Thus, we can categorise it as a case of commensalism. If we look at the process of course development at IGNOU, it is a mixed relationship ranging from symbiotic to parasitic. The course writers are paid for their efforts and they also get credits. The University gets the course developed at less time and cost involving only a few course coordinators. To this extent it is symbiotic. However, if we look into the amount of dependency on the conventional face-to-face system for course writing work, it is clear that the relationship is parasitic. The compensation given to the course writers are not adequate and timely. The University gets the bigger share, and sometimes runs a course/programme without having sufficient expertise. The University is at loss for not being able to develop its own expertise, and remain dependent on outside expert for a long time, making itself a parasite on the other system. One may argue that there is no loss/harm to the conventional system, and therefore there is no parasitic relationship.
In order to make a collaborative system work better and effectively, it is necessary that the inter-institutional relationship is symbiotic. Both the institutions should benefit from the relationship. If that does not happen, the system is only used to gain individual benefits. So far, we work on a system that behaves in a pattern of Commensalism.

Other Resources on Collboration:
Institutional Collaboration in Distance Education Development and Delivery
Collaboration in Distance Education

Staff Training and Development in Open and Distance Education

2007-09-02T11:26:00.001+05:30

I have written a small handbook on "Staff Training and Development in Open and Distance Education", which is available at IGNOU website: http://www.ignou.ac.in/institute/WebCD_Hb15/STDODE_index.htm

There are PDF links to various sections and the full handbook that you can download and use.

This handbook has been designed as a guide to personnel involved in Design, Development and Delivery (3Ds) of training programmes in distance teaching institutions. Using the numerous cases and examples in this handbook, readers should be able to organize effective training programmes at their own institution and for other institutions. At the very least, working through the various sections of this handbook will probably sensitize readers and prepare them to think positively about staff training and development in Open and Distance Education (ODE).

Ten Mistakes Programme Coordinators Do in Distance Education

2007-06-28T10:28:00.000+05:30

Distance education uses various models of course and programme design, development and delivery. It is also believed to have the ‘economies of scale’, because not many full-time teaching staffs are involved. Thus, distance education faculty members coordinate large number of courses and programmes. Sometimes, they are also expected to coordinate programmes where they do not have subject expertise! Such a thing can only happen in Distance Education.

The role of the internal faculty and instructional designers in distance education is very critical, as majority of the course writers are drawn from the conventional system with no or little training in preparing self-learning materials। Thus, the Programme Coordinator and/or the Instructional Designer have to do many tasks that could be really avoided, if taken care at the right time. From experience, the following ten mistakes of Programme Coordinators are listed below:

Plan for large number of courses and programmes without considering individual workload.
Request experts to write lessons for distance learners without specifying the “learning outcomes”.
Request experts to write lessons for distance learners without specifying the “target group” and their profile.
Request experts to write lessons for distance learners without specifying the “course objectives”.
Request experts to write lessons for distance learners without specifying the “workload” in credit hour terms.
Request experts to write lessons for distance learners without specifying the “instructional strategies” including learner support, assessment, etc.
Work under pressure to finalize courses and programmes compromising quality.
Plan and coordinate courses and programmes without having domain expertise and thereby depend on others.
Serve as a “Post Office” without applying his/her own knowledge and experience.
Follow an unquestioning non-reflective approach to teaching through distance learning.

If you do any of the above mistakes, the result is very clear. Your courses and programme quality as well as your reputation as a professional suffer to a great extent. Your course writers would not write lessons as expected by you, you will write and re-write the materials again, you will have to give undue credit to others who have not contributed satisfactorily, you will feel burnt out, and your student would not get materials as promised. At the end of it, your course will be ready, but without much help to the learners. But there is one satisfaction; you may be promoted to the next grade!

Social Bookmarking

2007-06-13T15:55:00.000+05:30

If you do a lot of search on the Internet, you know the problem of keeping track of what you visited last. Finding information on the net and saving the sites for future use is very important to save time and efforts. We use the web browser’s favourite function to save such sites that we intend to visit later. But, when we use another computer we do not get access to the favourite sites listed by us, and again we have to do the search.

Now, web applications like ‘social bookmarking’ allow us to have our lists created on the web and share it with others. There are many social bookmarking options. One with a simple interface is http://del.icio.us/ Register for free and see the advantages for yourself. Those of you who are interested more on the topic may like to see the MasterNewMedia page on “Social Bookmarking Services And Tools: The Wisdom Of Crowds That Organizes The Web”.

TinyURL

2007-05-27T19:10:00.000+05:30

Have you ever faced the problem of long web page address that breaks in your emails? I know this is a common problem for many of us. In my blog post of 26th May 2007, I used the service of TinyURL.com to shorten the link of a page there in. Well, this is an excellent free service and I recommend you to use it. Here is the link for you to try:

Odiogo for Bloggers

2007-05-26T14:24:00.002+05:30

Recently I came accross the website Odiogo.com that helps Bloggers to create podcast of their RSS Feed, and help increase accessibility of their sites, and content. I tried the service, which is free, and here follows the link to my blog contents in audio (mp3) format.

http://tinyurl.com/2mekjl

As an explorer, I am trying new technologies... and bring to you results...

Interview with Dr. Pankaj Khare

2007-04-25T00:21:00.000+05:30

The Indira Gandhi National Open University is offering its programmes outside India through its International Division. I came across the YouTube and TeacherTube recently, and thought to use it in my blog. I requested Dr. Pankaj Khare, Director of IGNOU’s International Division to give me an Interview for my Blog. He very kindly agreed to my request, and I even used his digital camera to record the video in his office after the office hour. We switched off the Aircon, and also put the fans to low speed to reduce noise. Here goes the question in text, and the responses in video…

Interview with Pankaj Khare Part-1
Q.1 Introduce yourself, and tell us about your work.

Interview with Pankaj Khare Part-2
Q.2 What’s the international reach of IGNOU in terms of student enrollment and number of countries covered?

Interview with Pankaj Khare Part-3
Q.3 What is the objective of IGNOU going international?

Interview with Pankaj Khare Part-4
Q.4 What are the most popular programmes and from where you get the most number of students?

Interview with Pankaj Khare Part-5
Q.5 How does the International Division operates?

Interview with Pankaj Khare Part-6
Q.6 How one can start an IGNOU centre outside India?

Interview with Pankaj Khare Part-7
Q.7 What are the achievements of International Division?

Interview with Pankaj Khare Part-8
Q.8 What is your vision for the International Division?

Thanks Dr. Khare for sharing your views with readers of TeachKnowLogist. I hope readers will like this. More interviews in future to come...Bye...

Quality Assurance in Distance Education

2007-04-19T10:58:00.000+05:30

I participated in a 2-day National Workshop-cum-Roundtable on Quality Assurance in Distance Education on 16-17 April 2007 organised by my institute. I served as a discussant in a session entitled "Towards Qulaity Assurance Mechanism", and presented my views in a short presentation entitled "TOWARDS A QUALITY ASSURANCE MECHANISM FOR DISTANCE EDUCATION: NEED FOR CLARITY AND CONSENSUS". Here follows the text:

INTRODUCTION
Quality in open and distance learning has been a matter of concern from the beginning. This is particularly so, because of the need to have parity of the graduates of the two systems. Moreover, it emanates from the assumption that the face-to-face method of teaching-learning practiced in most of the institutions is of high quality, and this is the only way to provide quality education. There is also no definite clarity on the meaning and definition of quality, and its assurance. Quality in open and distance learning in India is a matter of IGNOU Act, and thus, within this framework, the Distance Education Council (DEC) was established in 1991. Ironically, the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC), which is the agency to assure quality in Higher Education in India was established in 1994. The NAAC now has a clear set of guidelines on method and criteria of assessment for the higher education system in India. The mechanism for the open and distance learning is still developing. This is probably due to two reasons: lack of Clarity and Consensus; and therefore the sub-title of my presentation. I would like to argue for having these two essential elements within any mechanism for the open and distance learning system. I propose some areas of concern that need clarity and consensus for deliberations in this Workshop-cum-Roundtable.

RECOGNITION Vs. ACCREDITATION
There seems to be confusion over the use of these two terms in practice. However, both have different meaning and connotation (see http://dictionary.reference.com/ ):

Recognition: the explicit and formal acknowledgement of a government as stamp of approval
Accreditation: to certify (a school, college, or the like) as meeting all formal official requirements of academic excellence, curriculum, facilities, etc.

As for the academic process, recognition is given to an institution by virtue of the ‘legal process’ applicable in a country. According to the UGC Act, 1956 “22 (1) The right of conferring or granting degrees shall be exercised only by a University established or incorporated by or under a Central Act, a Provincial Act or a State Act or an institution deemed to be a University under section 3 or an institution specially empowered by an Act of Parliament to confer or grant degrees”. Thus all universities are recognized entity to award degrees. They need not seek recognition from another agency, unless otherwise, there is provision to the effect that education and training in specialized subject areas and/or methods be recognized by special agencies. For the open and distance learning, we are concerned with the mode of teaching, and thus, the IGNOU Act says “it shall be the duty of the University to take all such steps as it may deem fit for the promotion of the open university and distance education systems and for the determination of standards of teaching, evaluation and research in such systems, and for the purpose of performing this function, the University shall have such powers, including the power to allocate and disburse grants to Colleges, whether admitted to its privileges or not, or to any other university or institution of higher learning, as may be specified by the Statues”. This does not give any power to recognize or not any already recognized institution. However, the scope of the IGNOU Act for promotion and maintenance of standards of distance education system, cover any institution beyond recognized universities. Therefore, the mechanisms of accreditation should follow both ‘recognition’ and ‘accreditation’ approach – ‘accreditation’ for already recognized institutions of higher learning and ‘recognition’ and ‘accreditation’ for other institutions.

INSTITUTION Vs. PROGRAMME
What should be the unit of assessment? The NAAC follows the institutional assessment practice, and also has provision for specific programme assessment. Other national agencies responsible for quality in various areas/ subject disciplines primarily focus on programme as the unit of assessment. However, the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) follows both institutional recognition and programme accreditation. In open and distance learning, this is a critical issue as in one institution, there may be different programmes of varying quality particularly because of the fact that distance learning is a method and technology dominated system. Ideally, the practice should be programme assessment in open and distance learning. However, institutional assessment can also be used particularly for institutions that are not within the UGC parameter.

PROCESS Vs. PRODUCT
What should be assessed? This is a bigger debate. What is a product in higher education is not clear. To many of us this approach itself is not acceptable as the term connotes the market driven approach to teaching and learning. Nevertheless, in open and distance learning, there are various products in the form of teaching-learning material in print, audio, video, multimedia, webpage, etc. These can be assessed for quality. However, the claimants of the process assessment emphasize that without a good process, we can’t have a good product. If we want a good product, then we should have good process in place. Thus, the process of quality assurance in practice in an institution should be subjected to assessment as in the case of the Australian Universities (see AUQA). The ISO 9000:2000 also is a model of quality assessment that ensures an ISO certified institution is able to meet the needs and demands of its customers in a planned and controlled manner. So, we can consider process quality as a means of assuring quality.

VOLUNTARY Vs. MANDATORY ASSESSMENT
What should be the nature of quality assurance mechanism? Should it be voluntary or mandatory? The NAAC model is so far a voluntary approach. However, Govt. also wants it to be made mandatory. Ideally, the practice of quality assessment should be left to the consumers to decide, and therefore, a voluntary approach would lead to efforts towards quality improvement by open and distance learning institutions. Quality can’t be ensured by forcing institutions or programmes to be subjected to assessment. Quality is something that come from the within.

GRADING Vs. YES/ NO
What should be the way to describe quality? There are various practices in India. Some follow a grading pattern, and others either accredited or not accredited type of categorization. A yes/no pattern is rigid in its depiction, and therefore, we may use a grading pattern. However, the grades should also have explicit descriptors to convey qualitative meaning.

CONCLUSION
It is important that we get into consensus in all these issues, and devise a systematic mechanism that can provide us a set of guidelines to undertake external monitoring of open and distance learning institutions in India. However, that does not preclude self study and continuous improvement model for quality assurance. I would like to emphasize at the end that educational institutions (including the national Open University) should be ethically and legally stopped from running courses and programmes in which they do not have core faculty. The use of teachers as ‘academic managers’ and hiring of part time consultants has been helping many to generate resources, but quality is definitely being compromised. There should be some minimum deterrence in this respect to ensure quality. Running a programme without core faculty in that domain knowledge is like ‘quack’ treating patients.

What I have presented above as ‘Versus’ actually demands that these be treated as ‘And’. In open and distance learning system, the mechanism of quality assurance in India should include recognition and accreditation, institutional and programme assessment, process as well as product assessment, voluntary and mandatory approach; and yes/no type accreditation followed by qualitative grading (if yes). The mechanism should be developed through a consensus approach after due deliberations at the national level.

The E-Learning Bandwagon: Politics, Policies and Pedagogy

2007-03-31T00:32:00.000+05:30

I presented a paper entitled “The E-Learning Bandwagon: Politics, Policies and Pedagogy” (download pdf or ppt) in the National Conference on “Choice and Use of ICTs in ODL: Impacts, Strategies and Future Prospects”, 29-30 March, 2007 organised by the Prof. Ram Reddy Research Academy of Distance Education (GRADE) of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar Open University, Hyderabad (the first Open University in India established in 1982) on invitation. As usual in many conferences, because of paucity of time, I was asked to present my paper in just 5 minutes. Obviously, I was not very happy because of time spent on the paper preparation, travel, two days spent at Hyderabad and above all the cost incurred to the institution is much more than the 5 minutes presentation. But, this gave me the idea of putting the paper to my website and link it in my blog for wider circulation.

The paper is focusing on the Indian context, and is based on my personal experiences and critical reflection. From the present scenario of e-learning, I present three proposition for discussion and debate:

There are politics behind promotion of e-learning (I do not see politics as bad; but provide caution to take considered step towards e-learning);
There are no policies to support e-learning (I urge the policy makers to put appropriate policies); and
The pedagogies of e-learning are yet to unfold clearly (I emphasize on having appropriate pedagogical designs, though we are all in the process of learning and there is no definitive theory)

I also discuss some of the myths and lesson learned from global e-learning practices. At the end, I have suggested that in order to support e-learning in India, the following steps may be taken:

Establishment of “Indian Council of Online Learning”;
Online training of teachers on online technology through;
Creation of “e-learning consortium” through participation of Open Universities; and
A portal for teacher development of “Re-usable Learning Objects” as open content material made available to all.

Colour in Distance Learning Materials

2007-03-10T13:43:00.000+05:30

Colour is one of the things that human beings recognize in their very early stage of life. We find colour everywhere around us. Our capacity to identify colour makes us capable of interpreting the quality of the object we perceive. In fact, colour defines the character and shape of objects in everyday life. It is a well established fact that people prefer information presented in colour. Younger children particularly like coloured texts with pictures. There are a number of research studies that show the effectiveness of colour illustrations and visual displays in instructional materials. Colour also helps in drawing the attention of the learners to a particular section or part of a graphics in the learning material. In visual display containing figures of one colour, a figure of different colour attracts our attention. Also coloured pictures nearly represent reality than Black & White pictures. Colour helps us to recognize objects and relate them to some concepts, ideas, and other objects in the world. Research studies also indicate that the use of colour in graphics/ pictures facilitate learning if it is directly related to the instructional objectives. Thus, colour is used in distance learning materials for two purposes – to aid in the instruction and for aesthetic and motivational reasons (attention seeking).

Printing of any colour should have good contrast to have legibility. Black ink in white paper gives excellent contrast and legibility. Therefore, textbooks and self-learning materials are normally printed in black ink. Wherever pedagogically required, graphics/ pictures are printed in colour to facilitate learning. Sometimes a second colour is also used in the learning material, as it is useful to draw the attention of the learners to a specific part of the material that has pedagogic utility. Most of the time at IGNOU, the Self Assessment Questions (SAQs) are printed in a separate colour or a colour screen tint. Interestingly, research shows that highlighted colour has been found to be more effective in terms of recall and learning. Thus a second colour or its screen tint should be used in self learning materials to highlight the section of SAQs and important keywords in the text. It is also advised that colour should be used consistently to help the learner to recognize the importance of a particular section. However, recently the use of a second colour in the self-learning materials (except for graphics and pictures) has been discontinued at IGNOU.

In order to make a case for the use of a second colour in the self-learning materials, a quick action research has been done to calculate its cost to support decision making. Four different hypothetical cases were done for 1000 and 5000 print runs. The calculations are made for a block of 80 pages, and in all cases the paper cost and the cover printing cost remains constant. In the 80 pages of manuscript, it is assumed that there will be 4/5 units that may have about 25 SAQs spread evenly in the material. Thus out of the 80 pages 25 pages may have second colour.

For the 1000 print run the difference between lowest and highest is less than four rupees per copy; while the difference is only Rs. 1.19 for a 5000 print run. This indicates the savings of the University will further decrease in courses that have more than 5000 print runs.

The cost calculations and the instructional value of a second colour definitely call for a rethink on the present policy. However, I shall be quick to add that use of colour should be done carefully as about 3.7 % of Indians have colour vision deficiency.. It is estimated that one in 12 men and one in 200 women have some form of colour vision deficiency (RCI). The most common colour vision deficiency is the failure to distinguish between red and green (see wikipedia). Therefore, in self learning materials, the use of red and green in cover and inside text should be avoided.

Lastly, I would like to emphasize that colour give a presentable look to the study materials making the efforts of instructional designers and course writers look aesthetically appealing.

Bibliography
Waller, R., Lefrere, P., & Macdonald-Ross, M. (1982). Do you need that second color? IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, PC-25 (2), 80-85.

EDUSAT: A Satellite Dedicated to Education in India

2007-02-16T14:17:00.000+05:30

A satellite completely dedicated to education was launched on September 20, 2004 by the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), and Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) has been identified as the nodal institution. The satellite has already completed two years in the space orbiting in its geo-synchronous path. It is now time for the nation to know what is happening to this educational adventure by the Government of India. The satellite is capable of providing high bandwidth two-way interaction by creating a private network of Satellite Interactive Terminals (SITs) and Receive Only Terminals (ROTs) installed all over the country. The interaction mode is based on the popular Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP) used in the Internet and web applications. Thus, the satellite enables us to create a network through which we can share existing resources (often called as digital repositories), in text, graphics, audio, and video formats; and also can create real-time interactive virtual classrooms (often called synchronous e-learning) across the country. With both these possibilities, the potential is enormous for the educational development of this country. The satellite has six Ku-band and six extended C-band transponders, and the satellite covers the entire country through national and regional beams. But, one may like to argue that why is it that Indian planners and decision-makers thought of launching a satellite for sharing educational resources and providing interactive learning opportunities, when these tasks can be done through the existing Internet technology. The cost of using existing Internet technology would have been significantly less than the cost of launching a satellite, which has a life span of 5-7 years (or say 10-12 years); and thus the resources could have been utilized elsewhere. However, the Internet penetration in the country is limited at present; and thus developing a system similar to what is being offered by EduSat through the existing Internet infrastructure, would have created a digital divide. So, people in rural, hilly and remote areas of the country where Internet has not reached could not have access to the system. With EduSat, this barrier has been broken, albeit at a very high cost.

It has been highlighted that the “EDUSAT is primarily meant to provide connectivity to school, college, and higher level of education”. At the end of 2006, about 443 SITs and TORs have been installed all over the country with the cooperation of various agencies like the AICTE, NCERT, UGC and IGNOU. Ideally the setting up of these terminals should have been predominantly in the rural, hilly and remote areas of the country. If we consider the issues related to pedagogy (teaching and learning) using the EduSat, it is more critical and complex. There has been little so far done in this respect. This is evident from the fact that till date no Learning Management System (LMS) has been decided to manage the synchronous sessions. Similarly, the online repository is also in the rudimentary stage.

At the ground level, at IGNOU, video lessons are being recorded by teachers in the name of EduSat religiously without questioning its value and purpose. These lessons are supposed to be 2-way interactive sessions. In reality, there is hardly any interaction as the systems are either not functional or not in place. Thus, the recordings being done are only ‘talking heads’, which educational technologists and media educators sincerely avoided all these years. There is also another serious pedagogic issue. This is related to distance education, which is essentially asynchronous learning, where teaching and learning takes place at different time. Of course, there is also scope for occasional face-to-face interaction (synchounous). But, with the EduSat, are we unconsciously moving towards making distance education synchronous? Are we predominantly thinking that distance education should have synchronous interaction? If so, how is it planned for in the educational design? How are we planning for the students to use the system? How to bring them to these so called interactive EduSat sessions – that can only be accessed at a place having SIT or TOR. Not being workplace-based or home-based is a serious impediment of the present system of planning, thinking and technology.

At the current pace of developments, we may not be able to see the real fruit of educational development in terms of increasing access with quality. We may spend huge amount of money in purchasing of hardware and technology, but without any pedagogic thought and planning, all these investments is a waste. Is it possible for us to integrate EduSat into our existing educational infrastructure? The current development is like part of the distance education scenario of the country; whereas, the satellite can effectively cater to all the sectors of education. Also, conventional school, college and university can use the EduSat to deliver online education as a support to their classroom teaching. The system allows us to think beyond audio and video, and we should develop learning resources in multimedia, animation and simulation formats.

The technology also needs improvement to allow access from anywhere (not necessarily thorough SIT or ROT), especially as the technology is based on HTTP. If this can be done, the Govt. of India can focus on setting up ROTs only in the rural, hilly and remote areas not having access to the Internet (Of course, we have to think of electric power supply, and for that matter solar energy could be tapped). This will also bridge the digital divide and improve the Internet penetration in the country. The next important issue is developing digital content as national resource for all levels of education. As we all realize that interaction is important for learning, EduSat can be used for supporting this interaction on the basis of the need of the learner or the need of the subject/discipline. Teachers need to be trained on the new technology, especially how best they can make use of the EduSat for helping the students to learn better. There is a long way to go beyond lecturing to the television camera. If we continue doing this, there is every danger of again going back to the face-to-face teaching implemented through distance education technology. We need to remember that distance education follows the rigor of developing learning materials (in print, audio, video, and now multimedia) in a team mode taking help of best experts in content, media and learning design.

There are always more questions than possible answers. It is definitely time to start thinking about the effective use of EduSat, before many new developments such as SAKSHAT or One-Stop Educational Portal and e-content development take over and we forget about the potentialities of EduSat.

(Note: Views expressed here are personal, and not intended to blame, defame or hurt anyone. Readers are humbly requested to post their views to further educate me on the topic.)