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9. Create a new Standing Committee for the regulation of
ODE: At present, the Distance Education Council (DEC) under IGNOU
arbitrates standards and disburses funds for ODE institutions across the
country. We believe that this arrangement cannot provide adequate and appropriate
regulation. A new regulatory mechanism must be established by appointing a Standing
Committee on Open and Distance Education under the Independent Regulatory Authority
for Higher Education (IRAHE) proposed by NKC. This statutory body would be responsible
for developing broad criteria for accreditation as well as laying down
standards for quality assurance. It would be accountable to stakeholders at all
levels and to IRAHE, and have representation from public, private and social
institutions involved in the education and development sectors; these include
the central open university, state open universities, private open
universities, conventional education institutes, as well as chairpersons of the
specialised bodies to be set up to look into infrastructural requirements of
ODE.
In addition, two specialized bodies should be established
under the aegis of the Standing Committee:
(i) A Technical Advisory Group with representatives from the
IT sector, telecom, space and industry should be constituted to provide
guidelines, ensure flexibility and track the latest developments in
application. The most important function would be to devise common standards
for labelling learning content developed by different agencies in order to
support indexing, storage, discovery and retrieval of this content by multiple
tools across multiple repositories.
(ii) An Advisory Group on Pedagogical Content Management
with should be set up to provide guidelines curricular content and development
of repositories, exchange of material, access to students and other such
issues.
The Standing Committee on Open and Distance Education would
also serve as the nodal agency for the National Educational Foundation on open
educational resources, the National Education Testing Service (NETS) and the
Credit Bank.
10. Develop a system for quality assessment: Reliable
external assessment is valued by employers, students and other stakeholders in
the given context of a market driven economy In view of this, a rating system
to assess the standard of all institutions imparting open and distance
education must be evolved and made publicly available. The Standing Committee would
stipulate grading norms and independent rating agencies would be licensed by
IRAHE to carry out this function. In addition, it is recommended that every ODE
institution have an internal quality assurance cell to ensure that statutory
quality compliances are regularly met.
Establishment of the new organisations proposed above,
namely, the National Education Testing Service, the Credit Bank, the
National Educational Foundation for developing common open resources, the
Technical Advisory Group and the Advisory Group on Pedagogical Content
Management would initially require financial support from the government.
Additional finances for networking ODE institutions and creating access centres,
developing training programs for educators and administrators and providing scholarships
and services for needy students would also be required. Through our
recommendations, we aim to bring about reform in open and distance education with
a view to meeting the demands of the market while providing quality education
to the largest number. We look forward to being involved in consultations for
their speedy implementation.
Thank you and warm personal regards,
Sam Pitroda
Chairman
National Knowledge Commission
CC: Sh. Arjun Singh, Minister, Human Resource Development
Dr. Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Deputy Chairman, Planning
Commission
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