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4. Establish a National Education Testing Service for assessing
ODE students: An autonomous National Education Testing Service (NETS) must
be established through legislation and invested with functional powers and
responsibility for assessing all potential graduates in ODE. This unified
examination system would test the learners’ ability to perform intellectual and
practical tasks. All courses, degrees and activities offered through ODE should
be certified through this system.
5. Facilitate convergence with conventional universities:
The lack of convergence between programs run by open universities and
correspondence courses offered by the distance education wings of conventional
educational institutions is a cause of great concern. Rather than function as
parallel systems at odds with each other, open universities must forge organizational
alignments with conventional universities geared towards common goals and strategies.
They must engage each other in the collaborative creation of pedagogical resources
via OER and its delivery along shared modes. Programs and courses offered by each
should be subject to the same stringent norms of quality assurance. This
implies that the distance education departments operating within conventional
universities must be encouraged to put correspondence courses through the NETS for
purposes of assessment. At the same time, universities must also ensure that
their distance education programs are not stand-alone, but should benefit from
regular interaction with university departments in concerned disciplines. The
aim of such convergence is to eventually enable learners to move freely from
one system to the other.
6. Set up a Research Foundation to support research
activity in ODE: An autonomous and well-endowed Research Foundation must be
established to commission and facilitate multidimensional and multidisciplinary
research in ODE. In addition, a favourable environment for research must be
created by setting up infrastructure like libraries, digital databases and
online journals, holding regular workshops and seminars, granting sabbatical leave
for undertaking research, establishing a peer reviewed journal to provide a
platform for publication for scholars, and other such measures. A robust
research environment is essential to accord ODE value as a discipline, as
opposed to it being consigned to a ‘mode’
7. Overhaul training programs for educators: Training
and orientation programs must be conceptualised to enable educators and
administrators to effectively utilise technology to cater to diverse learners’
interests. The content of the training modules must promote familiarity with
the theories and practices of self-learning. Their delivery should take place through
several modes, including web-supported, audio-visual and face-to-face
interaction on a regular basis with experts, practitioners and peers. Most
importantly, these packages must be updated regularly and administered
directly. The B. Ed. curriculum must also be revised, updated and made to
emphasize theories and practices of self-learning.
8. Increase access for learners with special needs: Special
Education Committees must be set up in all ODE institution to address the needs
of learners with disabilities as well as senior citizens. These committees must
devise mechanisms to ensure their participation and provide effective mechanisms
for monitoring, evaluation of policies, and collection of feedback. Admission
criteria and time tables must be flexible enough to provide diverse options for
meeting program requirements to differently able learners and senior citizens.
Pedagogical tools and components from the open educational resources must be
adaptable to alternative formats for special learning needs. This could
include, for example, Braille, colour-contrast texts and voice recordings for
the visually disabled.
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