hile delivering inaugural
address
at the
UGC-COL
dialogue on "Enhancing Higher
Education Through E-Learning" from 17-19 November at India International Centre, New Delhi, Prof. G. Dhanarajan, the President and CEO of Commonwealth of Learning, Canada emphasized that we are in an irreversible path of information, education and learning. The knowledge of when, how and what to learn in the digital world will |
education institutions. Prof. V. N. Rajasekharan Pillai, Vice Chairman, UGC highlighted the strength of higher education in India, its massive size in terms of numbers and challenges and emphasized that with the e-technologies we would expect to double the number of students reached in a cost-effective manner. Prof. Ved Prakash, Secretary, UGC in his welcome address underscored the role of the UGC in guiding and monitoring the higher |
training. The present collaboration is the beginning of a partnership to provide such access to quality education, resources, and training to the tertiary education system in India.
Mr. Paul West, Dr. Krishna Alluri, and Prof. Asha Kanwar, all Education Specialists; Mr. David Porter, Executive Director, BC Campus, Vancouver, Canada; and Dr. Usha Vyasulu Reddy, Director of the local regional office of COL-Commonwealth Educational Media Centre for Asia (CEMCA), New Delhi; Directors of UGC-Inter-University-Centres; Vice Chancellors; Senior MHRD and UGC officials were among those who took part in the dialogue. The dialogue covered a wide range of issues pertaining to policy, content and technology issues in e-learning with special reference to higher education.
The recommendation and action plans, emerged out of the dialogue are: the UGC should create a learner-centered, cost-effective system to support the use of e-Learning by the institutions; the target group of the system will be the teachers, learners at all levels (formal, non-formal, informal and continuing), multimedia content developers and learner support staff. Strategies to be adopted and an action plan for implementation of the same was outlined. Public-private partnerships, Institution-industry linkages, National and International partnerships are to be encouraged. The role of UGC will be to provide: policy guidelines |
go a long way in helping the human resource development. The challenge of providing education to a huge population with diverse needs and learning styles will require a new approach in our delivery strategies.
Prof. Arun Nigavekar, Chairman, UGC, outlined the initiatives in the utilization of ICT and e-learning and emphasized that this dialogue would be useful for developing guidelines and strategies for policy, content and technologies to be implemented in Indian higher |
education system in India. He emphasized the significant contribution that ICTs can make in delivering quality education.
The Commonwealth of Learning, Canada is an inter-governmental organization, created by the Commonwealth Heads of Government to encourage the development and sharing of open learning/distance education knowledge, resources and technologies. COL is helping developing countries to improve access to quality education and
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