Address at the Launching of Goa Educational Development Corporation and Distance Education Programme of Goa University / Iit Bombay

Education with a mission

I am indeed delighted to participate in the launching of Goa Educational Development Corporation and Distance Education Programme of Goa University in collaboration with IIT Bombay. I congratulate the organizers, state government functionaries, GEDC authorities, faculty members and the distance education students for making this effort on this important mission. As you are aware, our rural population of 700 million people lives in 6 lakhs villages. In Goa out of 13.5 lakh population 6.8 lakhs live in villages. Distance Education is one of the means by which we can ensure delivery of quality education to this population electronically. I was thinking what thoughts I can share with this audience. I have chosen my theme of talk as "Education with a mission".

Knowledge society and education

During the last century the world has undergone a change from agricultural society, where natural labour was the critical factor, to industrial society where the management of technology, capital and labour provided the competitive advantage. In the 21st century, a new society is emerging where knowledge is the primary resource instead of capital and labour. Such a knowledge society has two important components driven by societal transformation and wealth generation. The societal transformation is on education, healthcare, agriculture and governance. These will lead to employment generation, high productivity and rural prosperity. The wealth generation is an important task for the nation, which has to be woven around national competencies. Core areas have been identified which will spearhead our movement towards knowledge society. The areas are: Information Technology, bio-technology, weather forecasting, disaster management, tele-medicine and tele-education, technologies to produce native knowledge products, service sector and Infotainment. The driving force for a knowledge society is the primary, secondary and tertiary education.

In the knowledge society the type of work is less structured and more software driven compared to the industrial economy where the work is structured and hardware driven. For handling this, we need knowledge based personnel. The worker has to be flexibly skilled and knowledgeable and self empowered. Education system for creating knowledge system worker needs creative, interactive and self learning and informal with focus on values, merit and quality. The current technology development and open market economy provides more challenge for every citizen in this developing country. If we have to meet the challenge we need to augment our educational system with innovations such as distance education to meet the aspirations of the large population. Apart from the mission of providing post graduate education, distance education has to promote wide spread literacy, provide skills to the unskilled and enhance craftsmanship work for realizing large value addition in the rural sector.

Current Distance education scenario

We have many models available for distance education programme in the country at present. The Indira Gandhi Open University, a pioneer in distance education, offers centralized admission to the students, course material by post and contact seminar programme in selected centres. They also arrange programmes through television. The Punjab Technical University (PTU) offers distance education programme with private partnership through various learning centres across the country, in various professional and technology oriented programmes. They use the most modern delivery mechanism to reach students across the country.

With the growth in information technology, we must graduate to take distance learning to rural masses with Virtual Class rooms having interactive sessions between the teacher and the taught. Adoption of distance education is a means of bringing education to every youth. Technology based learning has to become an important curriculum in our schools, colleges and universities. I would recommend our Universities in India to consider launching of such programmes in their distance education scheme to reach every nook and corner of this country. Only through this, we can transform the human resource into a knowledge society in the available time frame. The delivery mechanisms for the distance education are through e-learning, digital library and tele-education.

e-Learning

e-Learning basically involves delivering the course content through web for learning, training or education program. It may be on-line or on-demand or all pervasive with interactive learning. The content development, content management and content deployment process lead to delivery of learning objects. And this should be inter-operable across the learning management systems. Classrooms are no longer confined within the walls of a physical building, but are virtual and digitally omnipresent. e-Learning enables the student to become an autonomous learner.

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Digital Library

Libraries need to be digitized and the books should be available seamlessly across the universities and colleges for universal access. When the teacher teaches, he or she can refer to the pages in digital books to the students. On demand, on-line access with full text search will enable the books to be in front of you when you think of it. Digital library gives equitable access, irrespective of place, caste, creed or colour or economic status. Digital library indeed would combat Digital Divide. Digital Divide is of great concern for us in India. I would like to suggest the Digital Library should reach every college and school in this country with connectivity to outside world by 2005. Since we have fiber optic cables, satellite communication and wireless infrastructure in position, it is essential to realize high band-width technology like 10 GB (Giga Bits). Both Goa Education Development Corporation and Distance Education Programme of Goa University can adopt digital library as one of their resources.

Tele-education

The best teachers and their lectures are brought to the students irrespective of distance through distance education and they meet and ask questions. This is enabled by tele-education by having two way connectivity between the teacher and the taught. It actually brings the virtual class rooms and brings the knowledge to the students crossing the distance barrier. Also it has the ability to serve a number of class rooms simultaneously across the region. Tele-education requires tele-communication infrastructure through high bandwidth VSAT, broad band connectivity (Fibre Optic Connectivity) across the country till the last mile through wireless. Unlike the conventional video conferencing, the delivery of live tele-education has to be coupled with synchronized audio, video and data with live interaction through IP network in a reliable and high bandwidth. Tele-education solution should be built on a scalable framework. As you are aware, one of the major problems we are facing is the need to run large number of elementary and secondary schools in villages with teachers who love teaching. Therefore, I visualize a scene in which an excellent mathematics teacher teaching in Panaji in a classroom can be seen, heard and interacting with the students in some of the remote villages of Goa like Kalvale, Tivim and Canacona and becoming their role model.

Virtual University

Since the pIt is time that we should start looking at the possibility of creating a Virtual University in India through networking of all the universities and other educational institutions for imparting universal tele-education synergising their core-competence. Virtual university will have the following tasks:

a) Act as a central hub of all universities which are networked.

b) Identify experts of national/international eminence in specialized areas.

c) Coordinate, organize, schedule and broadcast the lecture of specialists at a mutually convenient time to all participants.

d) Record the live transmission of the lecture with interaction details in a data bank for easy access by participants for review learning.

e) Digitize all the university libraries and make it available for seamless access by all the universities.

f) Provide for all the three 'L's of Lectures, Laboratory Learning, and the library, all through the Internet.

g) The universities need to become learner centric.

This experiment across the country will provide a common platform for teaching Schools, Colleges and Universities and even vocational training institutes. This will give equal emphasis on theory and experiments in spite of the fact that it will be done in the cyberspace. Such is the power of the technology and our understanding of it. This facility would also help in expansion of telecommunication and IT services. All this would lead to synergising the strengths of different universities in promoting quality education to our students.

Employment generation through entrepreneurship

There has been substantial growth in our higher educational system and we are generating over 3 million graduates every year. However, our employment generation system is not in a position to absorb the graduates passing out from the universities leading to increase in educated unemployed, year after year. This situation will lead to instability in the social structure. We need education backed by employment opportunities. A multi pronged strategy is needed to make education more attractive and simultaneously create employment potential - how do we do that?

The educational system should highlight the importance of entrepreneurship and prepare the students right from the college education to get oriented towards setting up of the enterprises which will provide them creativity, freedom and ability to generate wealth. And also when the students come out from secondary schools and colleges, they should be exposed to business tasks of good enterprises. Apart from entrepreneurship, the youth should have the spirit that "we can do it". I have studied the mission of Goa Educational Development Corporation. In addition to its present responsibilities of creating graduates they should empower the youth with professional courses through distance education conducted in partnership with small and medium scale industries. The universities should become a facilitator for creating this entrepreneurship scheme through the support of the banking system and the marketing system. This is one way of reducing the employment gap leading to upliftment of the 260 million people living below the poverty line.

Conclusion

Distance education is very important component of our educational system. I visualize a good teacher in mathematics teaching for about 50 students somewhere in this city high school reaching several other schools in different parts of the country through universal tele-education. They can see the teacher and interact while they are connected in sequence. The lesson taught by the teacher is brought close to the students wherever they are located. I would then consider tele-education in its full form has reached our entire population leading to the minimization of digital divide. I would suggest the Goa University and Goa Educational Development Corporation to deliver and empower the youth of Goa with best of distance education system.