Chapter 6: Learning from a Distance

Introduction

Distance education, unlike face-to-face education, is the mode of education wherein instruction is provided to students located at distant places, even the remotest area of the country, through well prepared study material supplemented by audio-visual aids. The latest developments are the on-line delivery of course material and interactive sessions through Internet. This mode of education is also known as correspondence study or distance learning and is often called education delivered at the doorsteps. Distance education originated in different forms at different times to meet the needs of different countries. It was initiated in India, in the form of a correspondence course in 1962 by the Delhi University as a tertiary level education. In that year was established the first correspondence school-school of Correspondence Courses and Continuing Education. The nomenclature of distance education vary across the globe. In Australia it is called external system of campus education, in the USA it is independent study of home study and in Europe, correspondence study.

Distance education has two forms: 1. external studentship and 2. correspondence education. When a student chooses to appear as an external candidate without taking admission in a college or university, it implies that he has only the permission to sit for the examination of the concerned university. The university does not provide any reading material or any guidance to enable him to prepare himself for examinations. Strictly speaking, this form of study is not truly distance education.

There are two systems of correspondence education: 1. the regular system, and 2. the open system. In the regular system, the qualification requirements for enrolment are similar to those prescribed for the normal university courses. In the open system, the courses are open to any person who may not even possess any formal qualifications. But in some institutions they should have attained the age of 18 years for under-gradate and diploma courses and 21 years for postgraduate courses. Enrolment in some courses is subject to qualifying in a written examination.

The inflexibilities of conventional higher education system have led to the proliferation of distance education institutions providing access to a variety of courses to learners of all ages from all regions of the country. The system is beneficial to persons:

1.  Who have missed the opportunities for higher education for various reasons,

2.  who don not have access to higher education where they reside,

3.  who are employed, and

4.  who want to enhance or supplement their educational qualifications.

In particular, distance education is a boon to housewives, who can use their precious leisure time to enhance their educational qualifications and employment potential. The rationale for providing education through distance mode is now universally recognised. The teaching and learning process include self-study of structured reading material provided by the institutions, completion of specified assignments, learning through audio-visual lessons (including those broadcast over radio and TV), and taking part in guidance and counselling sessions.

Distance education is imparted by three kinds of institutions:

1.  Departments of Correspondence Courses in universities and university level institutions with such varying names as Directorate of Distance Education, School of Distance Education, Directorate of Correspondence Courses, School of Distance Learning and Continuing Education,

2.  Open Universities exclusively involved in imparting higher education through the distance mode, and

3.  A large number of private institutions mostly offering professional courses. There is no territorial restriction for enrolment of students.

Students from any part of the country may seek admission to any such institution irrespective of its location. However, there are practical difficulties in respect of attending guidance and counselling sessions held at study centres. Recently, the National Council for Teacher Education has banned the enrolment of students for B.Ed. course who reside outside the territorial jurisdiction of the concerned universities.

At present, there are 66 correspondence institutions functioning in 60 universities besides 10 Open Universities. The Handbook on Distance Education, published by the Association of Indian Universities, is a very useful guide containing information about the courses offered by each. It is frequently updated.

Open Universities

Establishment of exclusive institutions called “open universities” for imparting distance education is rather a recent phenomenon. Encouraged by the success of the first Open University established in 1969 at Milton Keynes institution in the United Kingdom, Andhra Pradesh Government took the first initiative in 1982, to start the Andhra Pradesh Open University (now renamed Dr. BR Ambedkar Open University) at Hyderabad. In 1985 the Government of India, through an Act of Parliament, established the Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU). At present, there are ten open universities in India as listed in Annexure 1. Although named “open universities”, they offer courses both under the regular and open systems. Besides Open Universities which are involved in post-10+2 level education, a National Open School (NOS) was established by the Ministry of Human Resource Development in 1989 to offer courses at the secondary and senior levels. The details about NOS are given in a subsequent section.

Private Institutions

In the private sector, there is rampant mushrooming of institutions that offer correspondence courses of durations ranging from three months to twelve months, mostly in different branches of management. Except for a small number of recognised institutions, the private sector is crowded by a large number of institutions often having dubious credibility, established by fly-by-night operators for making a fast buck. For example, in Chennai, there are ten institutions offering about 114 courses (including common ones).

Admission to these courses generally do not need any formal educational qualifications. Surprisingly, of these ten, four institutions function from the same address, three form one, and other two from one address. Display advertisements of these institutions regularly appear in a number of national and regional newspapers to attract students from all over the country. Most of the “fake” universities, the list of which is routinely published in newspapers by the University Grants Commission, offer only correspondence courses (See Chapter 13). Apart from diplomas, these “fake” universities also award so-called degrees in violation of the provisions of the UGC Act, 1956.

Nature of Course

Distance education institutions offer courses at different levels: first degree, postgraduate degree, diploma and postgraduate diploma, certificate and even research degree (M.Phil. and Ph.D.). The courses cover a wide variety of subjects. Apart from the traditional courses in Arts, Science and Commerce, both at first degree and postgraduate degree levels, a large number of professional courses at different levels are also offered. They include teacher education, library and information science, journalism and mass communication, nursing, management and its different branches, computer and information technology and several branches of science, computer and information technology. IGNOU, Kota Open University and Jawaharlal Nehru Technology University offer B.Tech. courses in several disciplines. The Annamalai University offers a mind boggling number of about 90 courses.

Quality of Distance Education

The success of distance education rests, among others, on four major factors

1.  Designing high quality, well structured instructional material both in print and electronic media,

2.  Use of distance learning technologies based on new communication and information technologies,

3.  Continuous evaluation of the achievements of students, and

4.  providing adequate guidance and counselling at study and courses.

The unbridled proliferation of correspondence schools and courses raises, however, the questions of quality of the education imparted. There are many deficiencies in the distance education system. For example, there is excessive enrolment of students in certain courses which obviously create administrative problems. The course material, more often than not, do not reach students in time; students frequently complain about the non-receipt of hall tickets, number of teachers is inadequate.

With several thousands of students on rolls for a particular course, what kind of continuous evaluation or guidance and counselling could be provided is anybody's guess. Often, the quality of course material is extremely poor and their revision is tardy. Except for a couple of open universities, hardly any institution uses even the most rudimentary form of distance learning technologies. In comparison, the laudable role of IGNOU deserves special mention. This has been discussed in a subsequent section.

The distance education schools attached to many conventional universities must share the major blame for making a mockery of the system. By and large, the university authorities perceive the distance education schools as a steady source of generation additional revenue to meet their deficits. The former Chairman of the National Council for Teacher Education, Prof. J.S. Rajput wryly but correctly observed, "Large scale expansion of existing institutions and establishment of new universities also resulted in ever increasing resource crunch.

As a result, the Universities were frantically looking for avenues of resource generation. Some of them hit upon the bright idea of utilising the correspondence course leading to B.Ed. degree as a means of strengthening their economic conditions... some of the universities in this process admitted more than 30,000 graduates in one year and generated crores of revenue for the university. University being autonomous entitles, decided their own fee structures and other charges that should be levied on the student trainees, keen to get B.Ed. degrees.

Their autonomous character also gave them freedom to conduct these courses regardless of the availability of sufficient regular faculty to manage large number of student teachers “(University News 1999, 37 (12), 4-5). Hardly any university had made any worthwhile investment for developing even minimum infrastructural facilities despite earning substantial revenues.

Franchising of Courses

However, a much more pernicious act is the indiscriminate franchising of courses by several universities across the country to fill up their coffers. And it ensures steady returns. Three such universities which perhaps lead in the franchising business are Guru Ghasidas University (Bilaspur), Makhanlal Chaturvedi Rashtriya Patrakarita Vishwavidyalaya (Bhopal) and Barkatulla Vishwavidyalaya (Bhopal). The University Acts generally specify their respective jurisdiction for the purpose of affiliating colleges. Whether establishment of study centres and appointment of franchisees outside the university jurisdiction violate this provision is not clear. What, however, is most disturbing is the misleading advertisements inserted by the franchisees in leading newspapers.

The franchises of Guru Ghasidas University, for example, describe their outfits variously as "affiliated to GG University", "affiliated Centres". "Approved Centres" authorised study Centres". "Approved study and examination Centres". Recently, the university has entered into franchising arrangement, in a big way, with the Zed Career Academy. The headline of one of the display advertisements issued by the Academy reads "Zee Education and Ghasidas University (MP) jointly offers (sic) you degree courses in BBA/BCA". The advertisements focus more on the status of the University by emphasising that it is "recognised by the UGC, Government of India and all Union States (sic), member of Association of Commonwealth Universities, London". While most of the franchisees offer BCA and BBA courses which seem to have many takers, they also include their own courses in the advertisements, giving the impression that those are also university courses. The franchisees of the GG University, in turn, appoint sub franchisees.

Although the avowed objective of Makhanlal Chaturvedi Patrakarita Vishwavidyalaya is to "develop a national centre of teaching, training and research of Journalism and Mass Communication in Hindi, conduct short term degree and postgraduate courses, develop appropriate technology software". It has taken recourse to franchising indiscriminately its BCA course all over India! One of its franchisees in Hyderabad issued an advertisement for BCA saying that it is approved by the "Bhopal University". The actual name of the University appears below in small print. The vishwavidyalaya had permitted the Indian Institute of Ecology and Environment.

Barkatulla University has tied up with the National Institute of Management and Technology to jointly franchise all its correspondence courses throughout India. The cost of establishing a franchised Centre, according to its recent advertisements, is Rs.8-10 lakh. Like the MLC Patrakarita Vishwavidyalaya, this university also had permitted the PRT Institute of Postgraduate Environmental Education and Research, a sister organisation of the Indian institute of Ecology and Environment, to offer two correspondence courses-Master of Disaster Control and Master of Sustainable Development. It goes without saying, these universities are doing great harm to the very cause of distance education by franchising their courses on a mass scale. What kind of quality control can they exercise over the franchisees is anybody's guess. It is high time, the UGC looks into the entire system franchising and granting recognition to correspondence course offered by such institutions. Such franchising centres are actually coaching centres for students appearing for examinations. This is not distance education. Why not they be permitted to appear in examinations as external candidates by the concerned universities?

Recently, the Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) has established the Distance Education Council (DEC) in pursuance of Section 5 (2) of the IGNOU Act, 1985 with the objective of, among others, maintenance of standards of Distance Education institutions in the country. It also plans to initiate the quality assurance system in State Open Universities and Correspondence course institutes. (See Chapter 7-Regularoty Authorities). It is, however, not clear whether EDC has the necessary authority to take the deviants to task.

Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU)

Indira Gandhi National Open University (Maidan Garhi, New Delhi-110068. Website: www.ignow.org) was established as a Central University by Act of Parliament in 1985 (Act No. 50 of 1985). At present it offers 55 programmes comprising over 550 courses at six levels-Master's Degree, Bachelor's Degree, Advanced Diploma, Postgraduate Diploma, Diploma and Certificate. The University has nine Schools of Studies: Computer and Information Sciences, Continuing Education, Education, Engineering and Technology, Health Sciences, Humanities, Management Studies, Sciences and Social Sciences. It has established 22 Regional Centres and over 500 study Centres across the country to assist students. The important characteristics of IGNOU are:

1.  relaxed entry regulations,

2.  studying according to the student's own pace and convenience,

3.  flexibility in choosing the combination of courses from a wide range of disciplines,

4.  Studying at places of students' choice and appearing at term-end examinations anywhere in India and some selected centres abroad,

5.  pursuing studies in any other university while being a learner of IGNOU, and

6.  cost effective education, because of generous subsidies provided by the Government of India. The University follows the credit system based on the time input for study. One credit means 30 study hours, which also include all learning requirements. Students can acquire credits at their own pace, their own convenience and according to their ability.

The instructional system is altogether different from that of the conventional universities. It has adopted a multimedia approach to instruction, utilising components such as self-instructional print material, video and audio programmes, assignments and counselling sessions, both face-to-face and via teleconferencing mode. For courses in science, computers, nursing as well as engineering and technology, students can undertake practical exercises at select Study Centres or work centres attached to them.

IGNOU is making use of information technologies in a big way for its MBA and Computer Application programmes. Its MBA programmes have "multi-media design using technology aided delivery system (teleconferencing, e-mail, voice-mail)". Under its project, management Education Through interactive Delivery System (MEIDS), IGNOU, in collaboration with 20 management institutions across the country, delivers 20 capsule programmes in management. This has been described in detail in Chapter 41 (Management).

From 1999, the IGNOU had introduced computer education programmes at three level-Masters in Computer Application (MCA), Bachelor in Computer Applications (BCA) and Certificate in computing (CCI). This is a part of IGNOU's online educational programmes. Its two other computer programmes, also introduced in 1999, Bachelor of information Technology (BIT), and Advanced Diploma in Information Technology (ADIT) linked to the MCA programme are delivered through Tele learning Centres. The Centres have the infrastructure to facilitate effective delivery of the programme which "include live satellite based tele-conferencing lectures, recorded video lectures, practical laboratories, CBT's and Internet based learning recourses".

Recently, IGNOU has teamed up with Satyam Infoway ltd. to provide limited Internet access to its students for its unique project virtual Campus Initiative (VCL). IGNOU would provide its students registering with the School of Computer and Information Sciences courseware on CD which would also include software for net access. Internet access would help the students to have online interaction with faculty members, peer groups and external experts. IGNOU has also introduced interactive radio counselling and since 2000 has been transmitting educational programmes through a new television channel "Door Darshan Gyan Bharati".

National Open School (NOS)

While open education system in higher education is well-known, not many are familiar with a similar system in the field of secondary and higher secondary education field. The National Open School (B/31- B, Kailash Colony, New delhi-110048. Website: http://nos.org), established in 1989 by the Ministry of Human Resource Development, provides education through a flexible open learning process as an alternative to the system of formal school education. NOS is a teaching institution as well as an examining and certifying authority by itself. It is a Board structured at the national level like CBSE and ICSE. Its Senior Secondary Certificate is recognised by the Association of Indian Universities and individually by a number of universities for admission to colleges and universities. It is also recognised by a numbers of State Boards of Secondary Education. The NOS targets school dropouts, unemployed or working adults, girls and women, scheduled Castes & Scheduled Tribes, ex-servicemen, physically and mentally handicapped, socially and geographically disadvantaged people and neo-literates.

Among the six programmes offered by NOS three relate to school education: 1. Foundation, 2. Secondary Education, and 3. Senior Secondary Education. The students can choose either Hindi or English as the medium of study. A brief account of each of the programmes is given in Annexure 3.

Unfortunately, the NOS has recently detected malpractices in respect of admission and examinations by unscrupulous agencies aimed at fleecing gullible students. The NOS had identified three types of malpractices:

A.  Procuring prospectus and admission forms,

B.  Distribution of study material, identity cards and mark sheets and

C.  impersonation and copying in examinations.

The NOS, through public notices had advised the students not to fall prey to the designs of unscrupulous elements. It has also set up a Malpractice Cell to curb this menace. Annexure 4 gives the important points mentioned in the public notice.

Virtual Universities

A growing number of people in the USA are pursuing advanced degrees without stepping onto a university campus. Nearly ten per cent of the students taking graduate level courses are enrolled in distance education classes. The Internet boom has added a new chapter to the distance learning system-the birth of online universities often called "virtual universities". A large number of online universities often USA have started offering degree courses through e-mail, fax, modem and online means. One website (http://www.geteducated.com/dlsites.htm) has a "Directory of Online Colleges, Internet Universities and Training Institutes". It provides an overview of the growing number of what is called "Virtual Campuses on the Information superhighway".

A comprehensive published guide to accredited "Virtual" graduate schools: Earning your Degree without Leaving Home, (1999) and is published by the Princeton Review/Random House. The guide gives profiles of as many as 195 graduate programmes in the United States and several other countries.

Benefits of Distance Education

Those who do not favour distance education are of the view that education requires a relationship between people because it is a process of identity formation, validation, encouragement, emulation and inspiration. This happens only in face-to-face situation in class rooms. Despite several shortcomings, distance education offers many benefits to students. It is inexpensive. The employment market is highly competitive and the best jobs go to persons possessing requisite qualifications. For direct recruitment, perhaps, the balance goes in favour of students qualified in regular courses.

Nevertheless, where selections are made through written examinations for jobs or for admissions into higher education or professional courses, what counts is the validity of a degree awarded by a university. The face value of a degree, for this purpose, obtained through a correspondence course is he same as that of a regular degree. In many organisations, getting promotions depend on the possession of higher qualifications. The correspondence courses provide them opportunities to enhance their qualifications.

To a great extent, it depends upon the students themselves to make the best possible use of correspondence courses despite their shortcomings. It needs self-discipline and a lot of motivation to succeed. If they are employed, they must develop the time management skill to enable them to allot adequate time for studying, completing assignments on schedule and attending guidance and counselling sessions. In addition to the reading material supplied by the institutions, they must also use other standard textbooks and reference books.