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| EDUCATION TRIBUNE |
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To ensure quality, teachers must stay informed 50 years on, distance education still a struggle Campus Notes
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To ensure quality, teachers must stay informed IN 1996 the Education Commission stated, “The destiny of India is shaped in her classrooms”. Though it was not a path-breaking statement, it urged all concerned, for the umpteenth time, to pay the required attention to revamp the ailing education system. However, the system of educating India has not evolved properly as it remains linear in nature, with poor infrastructure, both physical and intellectual.
The process of education revolves around the teacher and the taught. Though the student’s terminal behaviour should always remain the focus, the role of the teacher is more important as ‘what’ is taught depends upon how it is taught and how much is learnt by the student. The teacher is the architect of future generation and hence the future of a developing nation like ours is linked to the quality of teachers. No one can undermine the pressing need for good quality human recourses for India to find its rightful place in the world. This demands better primary, secondary and higher education system which must get out of its present role of ‘certificates and degrees provider’ and become more responsive to the needs of the changing world. Society and all other stakeholders, like students, teachers, parents and employers, have accepted the ‘time-duration-degree’ standard of education by respecting the document called diploma or degree, which the students some how manage to get. Our education system lays undue stress on standard set skills, average competency and teacher’s personal knowledge, etc. It does not help develop the spirit of enquiry among students, which is so essential for innovative thinking. The essence of teaching lies in teacher’s ability to create an insatiable search for knowledge among his students. For this the teacher of today can’t afford merely to be a knowledge-provider, he has to master the emerging trends in education, teaching, learning and knowledge management. Teachers can never cease to be learners. The very reasons why today’s teachers are not held in high esteem by students, parents and society should prompt them to adopt new methods of learning and strive to achieve high standards of dedication and commitment. The first thing the teacher must imbibe is a value system, since value-based education is not possible without value-based teachers. The major difference between the past masters and the teachers of today is their ability to realise their own potential and use the same for ‘man-making’ of their students. The information and knowledge revolution is beginning to influence the education system in many ways. Even when the teacher prepares himself to adopt IT in learning and teaching, his professional and communication skills, compassion and commitment to his student will be put to a transparent acid test of converting student into a wisdom-seeker, useful member of society. For that he must go back to the basics. It is unfortunate that many teachers do not take their profession seriously and consider it only as a means of earning their livelihood. They do not try to acquire necessary knowledge, skills, competence and wisdom to teach. Their knowledge is outdated, as they do not engage themselves in the process of learning. As a medicine after expiry date becomes useless and even harmful if taken by the patient, so is the case with ‘outdated knowledge’ which can do no good. Many old-timers take pride in showcasing their 20-25 years old notes which they used for teaching, without realising that even universal truths can undergo change in different operating time and space. Everyone knows nothing comes out of nothing; one has to pay the price for success, and that price is hard work, dedication and commitment to purpose. But let’s first find out who is a good teacher. A good, skillful teacher is the one who makes even a mundane and unimaginative subject more interesting for students, adopts innovative teaching and learning methods which support student involvement, has a good and positive attitude towards his profession, aspires to acquire life-long teaching skills to be imparted to student, goes beyond the given content, helps students develop the spirit of enquiry so that they don’t remain dependent on him, and spreads the fragrance of good value systems. Unless the teachers are prepared to accept the responsibility of translating these objectives into reality, the standard of education will remain as stagnant as it is today.
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50 years on, distance education still a struggle THE year 2012 is a landmark year for the open and distance education in India. It was in 1962 that the open and distance education (ODE) was formally launched as a pilot project in the University of Delhi. However, 50 years on, the questions remain: how far have we been successful in achieving the aim with which the ODE system was started, and what could be done to enable the system address contemporary societal needs? Stung by the ‘downward filtration theory’ of the British, the post-Independent India faced a tough challenge in the field of education. The major challenge was of providing educational avenues for India’s exponentially growing population in the backdrop of expanding horizon of information age, while resource constraints restraint infrastructural investments. The success of the experiment at the University of Delhi unleashed an era of ODE in the country. Today, we have 12 open universities and more than 175 institutes that provide instructions through distance mode. Ironically, after 50 years of ODE in India, one wonders why it is that still a large segment of our society looks upon the students of distance education and the system of distance education with suspicion. Why is it that some employers outrightly debar students of distance education even from applying to the vacant position? A close scrutiny on the growth of this non-contiguous form of education reveals that stains started surfacing in this upcoming mode of education, when some enthusiast institutes and universities in the early 80s saw in ODE the potential of ‘taking out their institutes/universities out of red’. In their unscrupulous zeal of money minting, some universities/institutes started enticing students by virtually distributing degrees on enrolment. It was conveniently ignored that this stream of education was introduced to provide a second chance for enhancement or improvement of academic qualifications to those who, for various reasons, could not do so in the formal (regular) system of education. In any case, it nowhere was to guarantee a degree or certificate on enrolment by compromising on quality. What has aggravated the situating is another fact that in a number of cases, the persons who are called upon to work on the policy initiatives on ODE or are given to hold key positions in the institutes of distanced education have a little understanding about the concept, philosophy, and constraints of ODE. In the early 90s, the Distance Education Council (DEC) was established as an apex body for the promotion, coordination and maintenance of standards of the ODE system, but the very constitution of the DEC could never earn respect of distance educators. As DEC drew its power from Statute 28 of the Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) Act, an unwarranted issue flared up from the argument that how can one ‘wing’ of a university ‘recognise’ another university. No doubt, IGNOU has brought about a sea change in the educational scenario, still some blemishes mark its credentials as flag-bearer of ODE. It has not only failed to protect the interest of distance educators but also created conditions tantamount to subjugating distance education to formal education. It is worthwhile to note that in 1962, when Dr K.L. Shrimali, the then Union Minister of Education, launched the mission ‘Education through Correspondence’, he listed three main objectives of correspondence education—“to provide an efficient and less expensive method of educational instruction; to provide facilities to pursue higher education to all qualified and willing persons who had failed to join regular university courses; and to provide opportunities of academic pursuits to educated citizens without disturbing their present employment.” These objectives substantiate what Plato had so emphatically asserted some five centuries ago that ‘education is a lifelong process’. In other words, it envisages ‘educational opportunities for all as per one’s requirements and demands’. Shattering the well-entrenched myth that the education could be had only during a definite span and sequence of time frame, ODE has gradually replaced the erstwhile dictum ‘earning after learning’ by ‘earning while learning’. It is high time to get serious over the ODE system to make education flexible, accessible, inclusive and affordable. Such initiatives are desirable when we are striving to make India world’s knowledge hub.
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Campus Notes A four-day workshop on the "Usage of Various Scientific Instruments" was organised by the Department of Chemistry in association with the University Grants Commission (UGC) on the university campus recently. Prof. A.S. Brar, Vice-Chancellor, in his address emphasised on the need-oriented research, so that we become self-dependent to fulfilling the requirements of society. “The data of research depends upon the equipment only, which may affect the research result if it is not handled properly. The aim of the workshop is to know about the maximum utilisation of sophisticated instruments,” he said. Prof. A.K. Thukral, Director Research, stressed on the need to learn the handling and working of scientific instruments. He also emphasised that every research scholar should know how to interpret the data collected from these instruments in a precise way. In his lecturer on "Tunneling Electron Microscopy", Prof. M. L. Sharma discussed the basic principle, instrumentation and applications of electron microscopy. With the help of high-resolution images, Prof. Sharma explained structure elucidation of microscopic objects. Prof. M.S. Hundal explained the basic principles, working and applications of X-ray crystallography. Sandeep Singh from Bruker Daltonics, who is an expert in mass spectrometry, presented the applications of high-resolution mass spectrometry in material and biological sciences. 225 students get placement
As many as 225 students from various departments of the university have been placed with internationally renowned Indian multinational IT company-TCS (Tata Consultancy Services. Dr Hardeep Singh, Professor in charge, Placements, said the selected students included the 2013 batch of B.Tech (Computer Science), B.Tech (Electronics), MCA, M.Tech (Information Technology) and M.Tech (Computer Science) from the three campuses of the university, i.e., Amritsar, Jalandhar and Gurdaspur. The selection was based on an online test followed by a team of 23 technical experts and HR interviews. These students have been offered an annual package of Rs 3.16 lakh, and they will join their duties after the competition of their formal studies in June, 2013, Dr Singh said. He claimed that the demand for university students by the corporate world itself speaks of the quality infrastructure and facilities available at the university. About 624 students of the batch 2012 from different courses have already been placed in various multinational companies till July 31, he said. Focus on socio-economic
development of border areas
Never-ending insurgency problem and communal conflicts have crippled the economy and disrupted the efforts for the development of border areas of the country, especially in Jammu and Kashmir and northeastern states. These views were expressed by Prof GM Bhat, Head of Department of Economics of University of Kashmir, Kashmir, while delivering his keynote address at the inaugural session of a national seminar on “Socio-economic Development of Border Areas — Challenges and Prospects”. The seminar was organised by the School of Social Sciences, Guru Nanak Dev University, in association with the University Grants Commission, New Delhi. Prof. Bhat said the socio-economic status of the border states of India is as diverse and as heterogeneous as the varieties of tribes found in the region. Professor Rajinder Kaur Pawar, Dean, Academic Affairs, in her address said though the preamble to the Constitution envisages to secure its citizens, people living in rural, especially border areas, are deprived of social and economic justice even after the 65 years of Independence. — Contributed by G. S. Paul |
