The Hindu : Focus on open learning

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Feb 04, 2004

New Delhi

New Delhi

Focus on open learning

By Our Staff Reporter

NEW DELHI, FEB. 3. A five-day training workshop on instructional design for open learning through online mode was inaugurated here today by the Director of the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), J.S. Rajput. The workshop is being conducted in collaboration with the Common Wealth of Learning (COL), Canada.

Prof. Rajput while stressing the emphasis on distance and online training said that in addition to the face-to-face training programmes, the Council intends to launch a series of training programmes through online mode in different priority areas in the coming days.

He said, "today the social and community expectations have risen for the demand of quality education and teachers from mere education. India being a vast country, NCERT has greater responsibility to reach out to the huge magnitude of 2,800 training institutes and the many teachers all over India. Our goal is to develop and design model training programmes through online and distance mode in priority areas of school education which may have a multiplier effect on training methodology to be adopted by training institutes located in states and universities.''

Meanwhile, 30 specialists in the area of training and counselling drawn from different universities and colleges will be participating in the workshop which will focus on identification of key elements of instructional design that can be applied to the development of distance learning materials and further the participants will learn the basic understanding of how distance learning materials are to be written, designed and produced.

The director also proposed to launch a postgraduate diploma in guidance and counselling in collaboration with the COL. The course is designed for teachers and educators who after training would be equipped with skills to work as professional counsellors in schools and also would be trained to teach guidance and counselling course to teachers in college and universities.

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