Operationalising Col

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UNIVERSITY TODAY New Delhi; Vol XXVI, No 1 1 JANUARY 2006

SPECIAL ANNUAL NUMBER

Operationalising the DU Campus of Open Learning V.P.Jain* Historical perspective The purpose of this paper is to prepare the future roadmap of distance education in the university of Delhi. Ever since the establishment of SCC in the university, the distance education sector has been making a steady progress both in terms of enrollment and in innovating pedagogical skills. In fact, today, the DE sector has overtaken the conventional sector. What is even more significant is that the students of the formal stream are coming to rely more and more on the DE study material for their studies. During the 1990's, the University of Delhi (DU) had set up a number of committees to address the issues relating to the provision and future development of distance education. These included the Joshi, Dass, Pant, Khurana and Maurya Committees (1990-1996). Even though, the various committees differed slightly in their perception about the final shape of the new format, they were unanimous in their recommendation that the DE be brought to the mainstream education in the university. 1

(i) (ii) (iii) (iv)

On the basis of the observations made by various committees, the Panchapakesan Committee(1997) prepared an action plan for the establishment of the Campus of Open Learning (COL) which was adopted by the AC and the EC. The Panchpakesan committee recommended the following:The School will become a Campus of the University of Delhi, to be called the Campus of Open Learning. The Campus will be headed by a Director (on the pattern of the Director, South Campus). Three associate Directors (of the rank of professors), who will be appointed by open selection, will assist the director. The Campus will have Faculties, Departments and other institutions. To begin with a Faculty of Open Learning with a Department of Distance and Continuing Education (herein after referred as 'DECC') in it will be created. The teachers of the School will become teachers in the Department of Distance Education. All future appointments of Professors, Readers and Lecturers in the Department will be by the University (under Statute 19(1)).

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The conversion of the teachers of School to teachers of Department can be done in the same way as it was done for the Central Institute of Education in 1978. (vi) The Campus will have a (i) Joint Registrar (ii) Joint Finance Officer and (iii) a Joint Controller of Examinations all appointed by open selection. (vii) There will be Regional Centers of the Campus in different parts of the city of Delhi, each serving about 20,000 students. Each center will have a Deputy Director, who will be appointed on the basis of seniority, from among the Readers. (viii) The status of the existing administrative staff would be protected when the School becomes the Campus of Open Learning. (ix) The Campus will set up, or have access to, a modern infrastructure for production of audio visual materials, for computerized operations and facilities of modern information technology in addition to well equipped conventional libraries. Subsequently, Statutes were amended on the basis of Visitor's assent received from the Ministry of Human Resource and Development. The Ministry of Human Resource Development letter dated Aug. 3, 1999 notified the Visitor’s assent to Statutes 9-A and 9-B of the Statues of Delhi University Act. After receiving the Visitor's assent, the University issued a notification dated August 16, 1999 regarding amendments to existing Statutes. Hence, faculty of Open Learning was added to the list of the existing Faculties and Department of Distance and Continuing Education was added to the list of the existing Departments of the University. Prof. Deepak Nayyar, who succeeded Prof. Mehta as the new VC in the year 2000 appointed a committee to fine tune the new structure consisting of two experts in the field of distance education from the Commonwealth of Learning, namely, Prof. Geoff Peters and Prof. Patrick Guiton, who submitted their report in March-April, 2002. The terms of reference of Peter and Patrick committee was to examine the possibilities in the provision of open learning possibilities in the university. In the meantime, the VC appointed an officer on special duty in the DDCE on 23.04.2001 to facilitate the conversion of the school into COL. On the expiry of his term the VC appointed director, COL in the year 2002 and an OSD of the school of correspondence courses in 2003, to carry the task forward. The new VC proposed modifications in the structure approved earlier vide a White Paper titled, "Towards Operationalising the Campus of Open Learning" in the year 2003, but endorsed the basic philosophy of the creation of the Campus of Open Learning envisaged earlier. To quote from his white paper: "As of now, almost two-thirds of the students enrolled are through the non-formal stream. While the regular colleges admit about 50,000 school-leaving students each year, as many as 75,000 join the non-formal stream. Instituting quality assurance mechanisms in the non-formal stream is therefore, of great social significance. It is in this context that we must see the recent initiative of creating a full-fledged Campus of Open Learning, envisioned within a multi-campus framework. The Campus of Open Learning should be viewed as the third Campus of DU, so that it develops into a full-fledged constituent unit in the manner in which the South Campus developed in the 1970's. With the recent initiative of DU to introduce broadband networking and internet connectivity, it has now become possible for us to explore ways

Page 3 of 12 in which technology can be used to make education available to a large number of students while enhancing its quality". . The white paper has rightly underlined that the strength of the non-formal stream lies in the existence of complete parity between the degrees awarded by the traditional campus-based system and the correspondence-based system in DU and, in no case should be diluted. It emanates from the commitment to the basic principle that all students get the same award irrespective of the mode, when they have studied the same syllabus and taken the same examination. The statutory position is clearly stated in the white paper: “the academic homes of the courses on offer at the SCCCE (like in the formal stream) remains the various departments and faculties of the university”. At present several departments and faculties offer courses through both the formal class-room teaching mode and the distance mode, and are, dual mode in character. Faculties and Departments are not exclusive preserves of any campus, but belong to the entire university. . OPEN CAMPUS--- THE NEW PARADIGM . It has been amply demonstrated that technology makes it possible to deliver (and relatively cheap) higher education across the university. The campus of open learning, as a radical re-conceptualization of higher education is not to be perceived in isolation, simply as an add-on to the existing set-up in the university. As a virtual campus it has to be understood as part of the re-engineering of the entire university. It will help create the necessary frame-work for real consensus building around a new set of assumptions that recognizes the impact of new education technology, which impels us to re-think how we teach and learn, irrespective of the stream one enrolls in. In spite of all the media hype and the constant refrain to convert the School into the Campus of Open Learning, a metaphorical conversion (the Campus of Open Learning is not an institution), which entails a paradigm shift to make distance education integral to the university system as an all-embracing phenomenon, it remains a non-starter. The Campus is to provide an open platform for shared academic activities, integrating all the departments and colleges into a faculty network. The COL is structured to involve the seven thousand strong teaching faculty in the university as a networked collectivity as a ‘resource-pool’, embedded in the virtual campus. The rationale for the conversion of SCC into COL is precisely to entrust the task of teaching two lac distance education students to this collectivity, to operate in a devolved way through the study centers in the colleges (like the Non-Collegiate Women’s Education Board, for example). Since the task had become too unwieldy to be handled by a college level, stand-alone institution like SCC, it had, therefore, to be wound up, paving the way for its metamorphosis into COL.

Continued on the next page

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THE OPEN CAMPUS FORMAT

UNIVERSITY OF DELHI (created by an act of parliament) Faculties - created under statute 9(a) Departments- created under statute 9(b) Colleges- created under ordinances 1

2

North Campus

South Campus

Provides infrastructure For class room Teaching Mode

Provides infrastructure For class room Teaching Mode

3

OpenCampus To Provides infrastructure for Virtual class room teaching Mode: e-learning platform Faculty Pool integrating all the depatments and college into a faculty network Open Learning

Development Centre Faculties and Departments Research and postgraduate teaching

Faculties and Departments Research and postgraduate teaching

Colleges

Colleges

Under-graduate teaching

Under-graduate teaching

Faculties and Departments Research and postgraduate teaching School of Open Learning Embedded in COL Under-graduate teaching

It should be born in mind, that Faculties and Departments are not the exclusive preserves of any campus, and are not mode specific (as misconstrued in the ordinance pertaining to SOL), for the university is not segmented into campuses. However, they organise their academic programmes in the academic space called the campus, which can be mode specific. The North Campus and the South Campus belong to the formal stream

Page 5 of 12 (class-room teaching mode) and provide infrastructural support for the purpose. Now that the third Campus has been created (called the Open Campus), as the virtual Campus, to organise teaching through distance mode. The Open Campus is expected to build the distance education facility (e-learning platform) by providing the requisite technical paraphernalia and also garner the requisite faculty support, both from within the university and, if need be, outside. It envisages a network of regional centers , an enhanced computer based infrastructure and audio-visual and library services. Networks and connectivity are critical to the development of successful infrastructure with a focus on curriculum delivery, learner assessment and personalized feedback. It can include text, video, audio, animation and virtual environments organized as self paced, hands-on learning. With the new initiative, the university will develop a culture of innovation in its overall conceptual design and organization by utilizing a varied pedagogical and instructional approaches including distance learning. With the broad band intranet in place, the university can now proceed to operationalise the open campus through integrated and experimental use of technologies as resourses to students, catalysts for learning to provide increased access and enriched quality education. At present, thirteen departments offer undergraduate level programs, and five departments offer their courses at the postgraduate level, both in the formal class-room teaching mode and through the distance mode. Hopefully, in future all departments would also be encouraged to go online. It should be appreciated that COL, unlike the North and the South campus is not a mutually exclusive academic space, but is designed to offer its programmes across the entire university. It will foster new methods of teaching and learning which are more flexible that will allow students, both in the formal and the nonformal stream, more freedom to choose an appropriate mixed mode of study based on their needs and fancies.

Department of Distance Education It must be emphasized that distance education has its own distinctive pedagogy, and its own philosophy. The Department is expected to offer academic programs leading to Certificates, Diplomas and Degrees in distance education pedagogy exactly in the same manner as the department of education offers courses in formal education pedagogy. It is also designed to develop expertise to help produce courses for delivery through the distance education mode, and also to actively involve in research, training and extension education activities. It should be borne in mind that the Department of Distance Education is not an exclusive preserve of the Campus of Open Learning (as per the new ordinance), and is well within its rights to float its courses in the formal steam also (like the Department of Education). Similarly, all other Departments in the university (many have already done so) are expected to offer their courses online, in the Campus of Open Learning. The DDCE, like any other department in the university is positioned in a faculty, called the faculty of open learning. The department may also be motivated to innovate, design curricula, develop teaching methodologies and system of evaluation for the courses offered in the open campus.

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The Open Learning Development Centre Over the years, distance learning has evolved from correspondence courses to video and satellite broadcasting models of remote learning. The Open Campus will create an e-learning platform for the university to go online. The campus will have a specific distance learning focus. It will host the necessary e-learning infrastructure and create academic learning space for the university to capitalise on this huge opportunity for distance education. But it will not be a closed environment. The idea is to pick the best teachers in the university and make them available to a wide spectrum of students and not just those in physical proximity. The Open Campus, as a collaborative scheme, will promote partnerships at all levels, integrating all the departments and the colleges into a network which would ensure participation of all the willing players in the new venture. Any department (belonging to science, humanities or social sciences) either on its own or in collaboration with other departments would have the facility to offer courses, both at the undergraduate and post-graduate level, in the open campus (like the South Campus). The COL, by drawing the best talents in the university, will innovate and design curricula, develop teaching methodologies and systems of evaluation for the students of the open campus as a special target group. The courses, new methods and modes of delivery so developed will be extended across the university, including the formal stream. The campus can, thus, provide an open platform for shared academic activities in the domain of course design, instruction and evaluation. The university, with the convergence of the formal and the non-formal system of education will become a full-fledged dualmode and mixed-mode institution. These resources would focus primarily on the material to be prepared for the university’s intranet and printed books. The task of developing learning opportunities would be entrusted to newly created sub-set of COL, called the Open Learning Development Centre (OLDC) which would also act as the interface with teachers in the entire university. A core of academic, professional and support staff, who would manage these activities, could be located in the centre. To fit within the university structure the OLDC would be contained within the department of distance and continuing education (DDCE). Apart from the specialist academics, the OLDC would contain professionals in the fields of instructional design, media design, graphics, editing and project management. There is a serious flaw in the ordinance which has created OLDC, as a subsidiary of SOL which must be rectified.

School of Open Learning . The university is structured in a manner that the colleges operate at the undergraduate level, whilst the departments concentrate on postgraduate teaching. The ordinance pertaining to SOL is paradoxical as it delegates postgraduate teaching to SOL

Page 7 of 12 which is a college level institution. With the function of academic resource generation shifting to OLDC, and the student support system decentralized as study centres spread all over the city in various colleges, SOL can, at best, operate as an administrative unit (e.g. enrollment of students and office level services) like the Non Collegiate Women Education Board. There are serious flaws in the ordinance pertaining to SOL. In their zeal to thwart the recommendation of the Rao committee to transfer the teaching faculty to DDCE, the university has found a very bizarre solution: all the teachers of SOL have been admitted to the DDCE as recognized members (Ord.XX(8)), in gross violation of the statutes of the university. The existing faculty already enjoys such a privilege: all teachers are members of their respective departments as they have been selected by their duly constituted selection committees for the purpose, and accorded recognition by the EC. The faculty in the school teach a multiplicity of courses and subject option belonging to their respective departments, which would not be feasible if they are shifted to DDCE. And no teacher can be member of more than one department simultaneously, and by extending membership to them of the DDCE, an anomalous situation of identity has been created, which is totally untenable. Similarly, the Governing Body (GB) has been reconstituted to provide for the provision that Director, COL would be its chairperson. In the university hierarchy, the director, as team member, sits on judgment on the decisions taken by the GB of a college under his jurisdiction. As such he can not assume a position subordinate to his position. The director, south campus has twenty odd colleges under his charge, but nobody has ever heard he becoming chairperson of GB at the same time.

Course Options The students of the School are discriminated against with respect to the range of courses and subject options. The School offers only BA (P), B.Com (P) and three Honours courses at the undergraduate level, namely, English (H), Political Science (H) and B.Com (H) for a student population of more than one lakh. The subject options in BA (P), which accounts for the bulk of enrollment, is limited only to half-a-dozen or so of outdated and outmoded courses, from a pool of well over fifty programmes (traditional and job oriented) available in the formal stream (see DU Information Bulletin). Ever since the School was started in 1962, not a single department in the university (there are more than eighty) has cared to design and develop a new curriculum, especially for the students of the School. Such is the deep-seated bias against the distance mode that most of the departments have even refused to extend their routine courses, for example, Sociology, Psychology, Philosophy, just to name a few, to the students of the School. Twenty job oriented courses are available in the formal stream, but only one in the School. No science courses are offered. It is a pity that the IGNOU, which started much later in the field of distance education, offers a wide spectrum of courses (more than seventy) in science, social science, humanities and ICT, while Delhi University is quite content to be a laggard. A law must be enacted to make it mandatory for all the departments to extend all their courses and subject options, both at the under-graduate level and post-graduate level for the students of the nonformal stream also.

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Faculty-support System Distance education students, who are not required to come to the campus, need access to academic advising services. Faculty members in all distance education institutions, typically observe office hours, during which time they deal with questions and concerns of individual students. The counselor is a vital figure in the institution of distance learning to stimulate the foundation of self help groups: students often get stuck because they come across a conceptual difficulty, for instance, and could not, without a face-to-face tutorial, (should be done on-line in virtual mode) get themselves going again. It is imperative to assign students to specific tutors, the general idea being that the student will stay with the same counselor throughout the course. As per the UGC norms, every teacher in the university is required to work for 40 hours a week of which 22 hours must be devoted to active teaching in the institution. A college teacher takes 18 periods of 55 minutes duration each per week. In addition, he is also required to give 3 contact hours per week to students for counseling. A teacher also corrects, on an average, 100 tutorial assignments per week. Moreover, the teachers in the colleges devote considerable time and energy to various extra-curricular activities. As per the recommendation of the Academic Reforms Committee, every teacher must be physically present in a college for at least five hours on all working days, which includes contact hours for student counseling. The same work norms apply to the teachers in the school also, albeit with a considerable more weight given to student counseling, for which every teacher has been provided with a well furnished separate room in the school. And yet, ironically, the faculty-support system of counseling, (the primary job of the faculty in the School) which has been eroding over the years, needs to be refurbished. The other student support system, namely, the student response sheet (SRS feedback mechanism), integral to method of instruction, which has virtually ceased to exist, needs to be revived. The MC of the school had constituted a fact finding committee to go into the malfunctioning of the institution which has observed: “a minimum of SRS per week must be corrected by the teachers of the school and this must be considered as their basic task while determining the staff strength.” The primary objective of SCC renamed as SOL (ordinance XX(8)), “is to serve as an institution of distance education and open learning” and “to organize teaching through the distance mode” which requires sending the study material at regular intervals, followed sequentially by counseling (PCP) and SRS to ensure participatory and individualized mode of learning. As observed by Prof Amrik Singh, an eminent educationist, “students are made to come together for a few days and given a series of some lectures, a pale version of what is done in a class room. What must be understood clearly is that distance mode is not the same thing as conventional class room teaching mode, but it is the same thing accomplished through another mode. This is the whole philosophy of distance education: it is designed to bring education to a student at home,

Page 9 of 12 rather than bring a student to education in an institution.” It should be born in mind that IGNOU, which is a model institution of distance education in the country relies on counseling for personal contact with the students. In the formal stream also, it is common knowledge that personal contact with the students is established not in class room teaching but in tutorials. Not surprisingly, the student participation rate in ‘PCP’ program is not more than five per cent. In its place has emerged a grotesque system of ‘coaching classes’ under the guise of PCP. These ‘coaching classes’ are essentially organized on week-ends and is paid work even for the school faculty as an extra source of remuneration, and it is not surprising that, over the years, the component of these coaching classes, as a proportion, has been steadily going up, at the cost of counseling and SRS which are central to distance mode. The fact finding committee has taken a serious view of this development.” The participation of teachers in PCP is highly skewed, a pointer to either mal-distribution or grabbing by some teachers or lack of any monitoring system”. The fact finding committee has taken strong exception to the system of overtime payment for PCP work to both the teaching faculty and the non-teaching staff which amounts to several lakhs of rupees, as over time payment, every year with the active connivance of the MC. The school collects PCP fee from every student (even though the participation in PCP is optional), over and above the tuition fee, which means that the PCP is not part of the teaching module of the school. However, if it is considered critical to the success of students (like the summer schools in British Open University) attendance should be mandatory. .. Continuing Education and Add-On Courses In recent years, a number of universities have responded to community needs by taking initiatives to open up more direct avenues of contact with their local and regional surroundings, to serve wider social purposes. Within the context of rapid technological changes, training and education is seen as an ongoing activity, (as the employees need to learn new skills and acquire new knowledge quickly and continuously) and the universities are under pressure to assign a more challenging role to part time and continuing education. The Campus of Open Learning, with a range of flexible delivery choices and distance learning options, is precisely designed to respond to the needs of the individuals motivated for professional development. A wide variety of add-on courses can be offered on-line for the benefit of both the formal stream students and non-formal stream students.

Decentralisation The School has on its rolls one-and-a-half lakh students, and they are squeezed into a college structure which was designed to accommodate a maximum of only ten

Page 10 of 12 thousand students. A regional centre was opened in South Delhi at Moti Bagh, way back in the 1970s, to cope with the situation. That was the beginning and end of the decentralisation process, even though it has been a constant refrain. It is envisaged that there will be Regional Centers of the Campus in different parts of the city of Delhi, each serving about 20,000 students. The recent endevevour to introduce office automation is a step in the right direction, but should be taken to its logical conclusion by extending all the student support services on-line. . The success of Britain’s Open University owes much to the network of regional self-study centres. The Open Campus will have a chain of self-study centres spread all over the city, with elaborate paraphernalia as learning support system: a decent library (both printed and electronic study material), audio-visual teaching aids, computer network and tutors. The self-study centres can be located in various colleges of the university. The sharing of the infrastructure between the regular students of the college and the students of the Open Campus can be worked out in an optimal manner to the advantage of both. The campus can finance creation of the necessary infrastructure, both hardware and software and networking requirements. The willing teaching faculty of the college can be associated with the academic programs of the Campus as an adjunct faculty: to develop new courses, participate in personal contact programs, organise practical classes for science based courses and help the Campus students as tutors in the self-study centres. The self-study centres will be integrated with the Open Campus by computer network and will have the facility to download study material of choice, fortified with self-help collaborative tutorial systems.

Post-Graduate Studies . All the departments in the university conduct post-graduate teaching, either in the North Campus, or in the South Campus, or in both. With the new dispensation, rationality demands that the Departments offering PG courses through distance mode organise their programmes in the newly created e-learning space, that is, the Campus of Open Learning. The proposal to continue to use the School as a surrogate for the Campus of Open Learning for post-graduate teaching (where the courses taught are university level courses), is seriously flawed and, if continued, will render the third campus superfluous, a self-defeating exercise. . It is pertinent to note that the students in the formal stream have the privilege to be taught by the Professor level faculty in the Departments, and thus, have an obvious advantage over the students of the non-formal stream. The basic idea of restructuring was precisely to assimilate these underprivileged students also in the mainstream, by shifting all post-graduate teaching from the School to the concerned Departments in the new setup of the university, within the institutional framework of the Campus of Open Learning, where it actually belongs. However, the distinguished teachers of the School can be associated with post-graduate teaching in the departments as guest faculty, as part of

Page 11 of 12 cooperative teaching in the university. The School, like any other college, should concentrate on under-graduate teaching. Examination The examination system in the university has lost all the credibility it once enjoyed. The SCC has been forced to adopt the same format with disastrous consequences. The students of the school have the dubious distinction of having the highest failure rate. Another serious problems with the examination of the students of the School is the inordinate delay in the evaluation of the scripts and declaration of the results. Last year, the university introduced a system of ‘internal evaluation’ as part of the examination reforms. However, the system has not been extended to the students of the School, (ordinance VIII E). The students of the school need internal evaluation and continuous monitoring more than the students in the regular stream. Moreover, the students of the school are required to undertake written assignments (SRS) which are marked by the tutors, and this activity which is a method of monitoring progress can also be used as a method of assessment of performance as part of internal assessment scheme. There is an urgent need to create the much needed e-learning platform which can make the task much easier by making assessment by tutors on-line. The university has, however, constituted a sub-committee to look into the issue of internal assessment for the students of distance education whose report is awaited. Several computer based on-line examination modes are available and more can be developed for the courses offered to the students through the Open Campus. Finance Distance education is cost effective in various ways. Distance learning often operates at more efficient teacher/student ratio. The SCC has a teaching faculty of about eighty for a student population of one and half lakhs. Several studies have established that the unit cost in distance education is distinctly lower than in the conventional mode. On an average, the financial deficit per college is estimated to be of the order of five to six crores of rupees per year. The total deficit for all the colleges in the university comes to more than three hundred crores per year. In sharp contrast to this, the estimated deficit for the SCC, which caters to more students than the combined strength of all the colleges taken together, is no more than the average of only one college (i.e. six crores). It would be of interest to know that the SCC has been meeting this deficit from its surplus account for a number of years and as such has been self supporting financially. And yet there are tremendous possibilities of further economising if the university views the mismanagement of the institution with more concern (and takes the impending reform more seriously), which has, of late assumed scandalous proportions. The institution has all the promise, not only to be a self-supporting unit, but also generate surplus for the more pampered formal sector. . Conclusion The boundaries between the formal and non-formal education sector are getting fuzzy, and very soon, may disappear completely. Face to face classroom teaching is no longer considered the most coveted option. The ubiquitous course material of the distance

Page 12 of 12 mode has caught the imagination of students in a big way and has popularized a parallel education system: it flourishes in the form of self-help study material, both in print media and CD based tutorial manuals, the television education channels and, of course, the world wide web. The success story of the readymade class-notes prepared and circulated by the seniors (as witnessed by the spread of xerox culture) has rendered face to face teaching redundant for a whole lot of self motivated students. The open campus has already established itself, albeit only obliquely. COL will enhance the quality of teaching and learning by extending support to all the departments and colleges, as they endeavor to meet the demands of the students with innovative courses and new modes of delivery. Instead of coercing the students in to the classroom (e.g. minimum attendance to be eligible to take an exam or awarding marks for attendance as part of internal evaluation) let different modes of teaching and learning compete the way courses do, leaving the final outcome to the evolutionary processes to be sorted out. . V P Jain (Retd) Department of Economics,School of Open Learning, University of Delhi.