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ADDING EFFECTIVENESS TO THE ON GOING DISTANCEEDUCATION PROGRAME

byLalit Mohan Joshi & Bhawana Joshi

Education is one of the most important factors in achieving the developmental goals of the country. It is the key to the national development. It is an investment in the humanresources. If the fruits of education have to reach to common man, it must be adequatelyand properly administered.The importance of education can be interpreted from the reply to the question asked fromAristotle. The question asked was, “How much better educated men were than those whowere uneducated?” The reply was “As much as living are than the dead.”The New education Policy also accords high priority to education in the process of development. Education has an acculturating role. It refines sensitivities and perceptionsthat contribute to national cohesion, a scientific temper and independence of mind andspirit thus furthering the goal of socialism, secularism and democracy enshrined in our constitution.If an educational system has to be relevant to the society in which it operates it needs to

be effectively respond to the demand of that society .In other words socio-politicalchanges, which colour and shape social needs greatly influence educational systems. As aresult new systems emerge and it is a continuous process and it leads to the emergence of distance education.

Distance education System is a device to provide education to distant students as well asreduce communication gap between the distant students as well as the teacher.

The relevant characteristics of distance education are;• Division of labhour in the teaching process which allows rationalization of the

elements of the teaching process• Use of technical equipments to ensure a product of constant quality• Application of organizational principles to cut down unnecessary effort on the

part of those teaching and those learning• The use of technical media such as television and radio to replace teachers and

cater for volume• Testing of the product, the teaching package to eliminate mistakes and

guarantee a standard• Monitoring of the teaching systems by sufficient methods to maintain quality

and standards

Distance education involves very specialized knowledge and competence in a variety of fields such as curriculum development and the development and production of

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educational material, communicational skill related to media, information marketing,counseling of the students, study support and tuition distribution and delivery of materialsand organization of teaching activities often in collaboration with local partners.Thus, distance education is aimed at teaching, guiding and supporting the students in alllocations through well designed lecture scripts, Supported by tutors, personal contact

programs, response sheet assignments and electronic media.

Diagram

Amongst the various important pillars of distance education technological support is theforemost factor .it has highly significant role to play in a developing country like ours inreaching to distance students.Communication media and technology is the application of modern techniques andresources to meet educational needs of the learner in order to adjust according to the

environment and to make subject matter more comprehensible, attractive and at the sametime ensure the retention factor Its primary role is to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the entire teachinglearning process through a systems approach putting to use modern communicationtechnologies and the media.The main aim of new technology based on electronic media is to supplement theinstructional material with electronic media to keep the learners motivated, well informedand move towards self learning practices which would make him slowly and slowly intoan independent learner.Hence the responsibility of the distance education institutes is to guide the distantlearners in the choice of new technology and how to operate it. However at present thefaculty of distance education is not making use of this technology in preparinginstructional material.In order to ascertain the usage of the technological support by the distant learner aresearch study was conducted by my co-investigator and me recently.

Hypothesis : In the present study it has been assumed that distance education learners arewell informed about various technological resources and they make the fullest use of itfor the realization of their objectives.

Sample: A sample of about sixty four (64) students undergoing the B.Ed. course of IGNOU was purposefully selected for the study.

Tools & Procedure: A questionnaire containing a total of 12 items were developed outof which 10 items were to be answered in YES or NO. Item no 11 was related to the

preference of the respondents.Item no 12 was a subjective item inviting their views these items were prepared by usafter continuous experience at the study center of DLP.

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The above questionnaire was administered during the B.Ed. workshop held at M.B. Govt.P.G college, HaldwaniAfter collecting the filled forms, analysis using the non-parametric statistics was carriedout by us.On the basis of the statistics the following results were obtained.

Results:

Table 1.01

1) 77% of the learners agree that the knowledge of various technological resourceswas provided at their study center.

2) 94% of the learners were aware of the various technological resources, whichsupport their studies.

3) Only 37% of the learners watch educational TV broadcast which support their studies.

4) Only 28% of the learners have ever watched educational TV broadcast relevantto their courses.5) Only 26% of the learners are alert about the date and topic of the talk to be

broadcast by AIR.6) 64% of the learners agree that technological media are most useful than the

lecture script provided to them.7) 59 % of the learners accept that lecture scripts and personal contacts suffice their

needs at IGNOU.8) About 45% of the learners asked for the help of technological resources related to

their programme at their center.9) Only 19% of the learners referred the books available at the library of the study

center.10) A huge percentage of the learners are of the opinion that technological support

would have been beneficial to them11) Only 15 % of the learners give importance to technological support where as

46% of the learners believe that Personal Contact Program (PCP) as a major support to learning.

Conclusions:The results stated above reveal that a major population is aware of the varioustechnological resources like television, radio broadcast, internet, educational CDs,audio cassettes but they hardly make use of such broadcast to support their studies.The results establish that the learners accept the importance of technologicalresources over the conventional methods. Further the results show that the learnersmake least use of easily accessible resources like the library at their study center.Despite of the opinion that technical resources are beneficial to –Technology must bethem but they insist out rightly on Personal Contact Program (PCP) and lecture scriptto help the out. This result can be interpreted taking into consideration of their

prolonged exposure to the traditional means and non- accessibility of technologicalresources.

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Measures/Suggestions For The Effective Use Of Technological Support:

I. of criteria must be given a consideration like-

a. Availability- Technology must be well established in a local environment.

b. Accessibility - The chosen technology must be easily available to all thestudents or at least in the study center.

c. Acceptability - The attitude of the teachers and the students must be positivetowards the use of technology.

d. Validity - It must be appropriate to the instructional objectives and contentsthat constitute the courses.

e. Economics - The results must justify the cost incurred.Apart from the above criteria some more criteria like Quality, Specificity,

Sensitivity should be taken into consideration.

II. On the basis of the above set criteria, a design of the Technological Resource Centre (TRC) which encompasses the various modes of communication has been suggested by us-

Diagram

In the above model of TRC weightage has been given to – Mass communication – (Room No 1) which includes radio and television

broadcast, cable TV, pay TV, library which contains reference books,audio- video cassettes and CDs.Knowledge Technologies – (Room No 2,3) which includes multimedialearning packages, teaching machines, and knowledge packagesPersonalised communication –(Room No 4) which includes telephone,cellular phones, internet, fax and e-mail. With regards to theadministration, the centre should have an executive committeecomprising of the head of the above three resource rooms. They willfunction in mutual co-ordination and in co-ordination with the centre co-ordinator. Some assistants may be provided to assist the task as per thework load.

III. The Technological Resource Centre should display the schedule of various radio and TV broad well in advance on their display board.

IV. In order to make the maximum use of the TRC the students and the staff must be made aware of the various resources available in it. The staff should be trained accordingly.

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V. Academic weightage in terms of marks/grades should be awarded tothose students who make use of technological support in writing their assignments.

VI. The courseware of the DLP must contain certain practicals, whichwould check the student’s versatility in handling technological support.

VII. Knowledge Technologies, one of the components of TRC besidesgiving knowledge can evaluate the learners performance on variousaspects of different courses and grade them accordingly from time totime.

VIII. Educational material i.e. .CDs and Cassettes should be according to theneeds of the learners and not on the model of foreign material.

IX. Audio and Video lessons should be integrated with the counselingschedules.

It is high time that we realize the inherent potentialities of distance education system and

improve upon it as mentioned in our research paper. The benefits of distance educationsystem can percolate to the country and its people in the 21 st century provided we run thedistance education programes through intellectual planning , genuine implementation andconstant evaluation to ensure perfect and dynamic system .

Thank You