FICCI Higher Education Summit 07: Panel says leveraging technology in higher education the way forward

Ironically whilst, India is an IT giant, there is still a great reluctance towards online education in this country; there is tendency to look down upon distance education as the second best. Noticing this trend and offering solutions, eminent speakers from the field of online education discussed the issue of Leveraging Technology in Higher Education: Distance Education & e-Learning; Quality Assurance Mechanisms during the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry (FICCI) Higher Education Summit 2007 on November 2.

According to FICCI report, In e-learning, learners can access learning material from anywhere and at anytime. It is just in time anytime approach.

Speaking about Technology Enhanced Learning, Mr M S Ananth, Director IIT Madras, emphasized the need for Internet based alternatives to classroom learning and collaboration. He said, Massive online education is an emerging market where our emphasis is on learning in comparison to classroom teaching. It is not a new concept in India, he further added, The first student of such kind of education was Eklavya who got distance-learning by his guru Dronacharya. Inspired by this thought we have created broadcast video lecture by the name of Eklavya.

Public acceptance for distance learning mode would increases, provided issues of self confidence on behalf of the students, internet access and cost are addressed.According to Mr M S Ananth, Students prefer to learn through participation and experiment in a media technology and it is very much possible in e-learning nowadays.

Prof Jeremy Williams, Dean Corporate Programmes & Director of Research, Universitas 21 Global, Singapore said, In e-learning, instead of teaching, we create ambience of learning. E-learning is end of teaching and the start of learning where we use very constructive pedagogy which focuses on knowledge construction.According to Mr Rajen Padukone, Executive Director, Manipal Universal Learning, The major issues we are facing in distance education are of equivalence, quality and acceptance by industry and academia. People in India have mindset that there is need to attend classroom. To change the perception about online learning, Mr Padukone suggested, Online learning needs to support hybrid system prevalent in existing distance education system. Providers need to focus on students achievement to determine quality in terms of competencies gained. Increased corporate endorsement to distance education will help too.

Talking about Ensuring Quality in Distance Education Mr Richard Allen, Dean of Arts, Open University, UK, said, The most important thing in ensuring quality leveraging technology for excellence. Excellence is all about achieving standards and being recognize for those standards. Further he recommended the Panopticon model, where masters of the prison could observe everything without the prisoners being able to tell if they being observed or not. According to him, This applies to teacher and learner in the e-learning system and hugely enabled by use of virtual learning. But the problem is assurance of using it.

According to FICCI report, the proposed outlay to support open and distance learning system during the Eleventh Plan Period is Rs 8,116 crore.