Dr. Jeetendra Pande

CEMCA is supporting eight higher education institutions in Commonwealth Asia to conduct research based projects using COL–CEMCA Higher Education Integrated Model. Under these projects CEMCA is addressing the quality assurance one of the major component to enhanced capacity of the higher education ODL institutions. In this regard CEMCA is designing and developing a Quality Assurance Toolkit for ODL Institutions in Commonwealth Asia. The quality Assurance Toolkit need to be finalised in a workshop involving all the CEMCA partner institutions engaged in Integrated Higher Education Model. In this regard CEMCA organised a workshop on February 4-5, 2019 at e-Learning Centre, University of Hyderabad with the project partners for finalization and further testing the same in their respective institutions under the project.

Prof. Krunesh Saxena and Dr. Manas Ranjan Panigrahi drafted the toolkit. Dr. Panigrani shared the background and purpose of the toolkit and workshop objectives. 24 participants from 12 higher education institutions of three countries participated in the workshop. The workshop was facilitated by Prof. Karunesh Saxena and Dr. Manas Ranjan Panigrahi. In the workshop inauguration, Prof. Bhushan Patwardhan, Vice-chairman, University Grants Commission, Govt. of India launched the Mobile App of the elearning centre of the University of Hyderabad and said the app would help students learn from anywhere. Learners will get access to all learning materials including CEMCA supported courses.

Inaugurating a two-day workshop, Prof. Bhushan Patwardhan said that emerging online technologies can have a disruptive effect and universities offering distance education programmes will need to gear up to meet the challenge. Prof. Patwardhan also said that the UGC was constantly working to create an enabling environment for universities to work smoothly. The UGC was working on several policy decisions that would change the way universities would be able to reach more students using online technologies, he said. He also appreciated the effort of CEMCA-COL in this regard and requested CEMCA-COL to provide support to the UGC. Please see this video: https://youtu.be/T3tQGtjiyCo

Presiding over the inaugural session, Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Appa Rao Podile said the university was extending all help to the E-Learning Centre and would like to see it emerge as a centre of excellence and national importance. The university was committed to providing quality education and the toolkit would help the university look inwards from time to time, he said.

Session started with Prof. Karunesh Saxena, in the session he presented the draft quality assurance toolkit, which includes the Factors: 1. Leadership (Policy & Planning); 2. Programme/Course Design; 3. Courseware/ Material Development; 4. Learner Support (Academic and Administrative); 5. Performance Evaluation; 6. Infrastructure (Technology Infrastructure Included); 7. Output and Outcome Quality; 8. Human Resources. He also present the quality indicators of the each aspect and its implementation strategy including analysis interpretation.

After the presentation, Prof. V S Prasad; Prof. Vunnam Venkaiah and Prof. Manjulika Srivastava reflect for further improvement i.e. : Mention ODL goals and expand them; Provide knowledge resources to justify the title of the toolkit; Elaborate on Objectives; Replace components with the "Performance Area"; Define key words and elaborate accordingly;

Further all the participants discussed and reflected on the each and every factors along with the adequacy of indicators. The participants commonly agreed and suggested the additional three more factors to be included in the toolkit i.e.: Learners Admission & Enrolment; Research Innovation and Extension; Financial Management.

The sessions ended with the presentations from each group. All group members enthusiastically participated for finalising of all eight factors and its indicators. Besides this, each group prepared the indicators on the additional three factors. Followed by the group work, participants finalised all the indicators and its scoring procedures along with the reporting strategy. Participants also finalised the Quality Assurance Toolkit user manual and suggested the stapes for implementation and reporting with annual/biannual institutional Quality plan. In the workshop, the partner institution proposed and agreed that, they will implement the Final Quality Assurance Toolkit in a pilot mode and submit a report along with annual/biannual institutional Quality plan to CEMCA.

Reference: CEMCA Website

Integrated Open and Distance Learning (ODL) through ICT at UOU for Sustainable Development project was started in 2017 which was supported by CEMCA, New Delhi. This project includes development of 15 online courses (including 4 courses on cyber security) which were offered through MOODLE based MOOC platform which was developed using CEMCA support. The implementation of the above project gave us the confidence and expertise to avail the opportunity to host an online course in National MOOC platform in India, SWAYAM. A foundation course on cyber security was identified for implementation and after the due approval from the competent authorities of the University, the project proposal was submitted to SWAYAM. The project was awarded by SWAYAM in 2017 and the course was developed and offered since July 2019 in the SWAYAM portal.

Total 16964 learners across 40 countries participated in the course. Total 489 learners appeared in the examination conducted by National Testing Agency (NTA) on 10 Nov., 2019 at various exam centres throughout the country. There were high number of participants from African countries and on the special request, a special exam for African learners at GHANA was organised by NTA. This course on “Introduction to Cyber Security” was one of the top 20 non-NPTEL courses offered through SWAYAM in terms of the number of enrolments in 2019.