The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Tiruchi News : Varsity to tone up distance education through Internet

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Apr 24, 2004

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Tiruchi

Varsity to tone up distance education through Internet

By R. Krishnamoorthy

TIRUCHI, APRIL 23 . The Bharathidasan University proposes to make the learning environment multidimensional through Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and Internet, under the UGC-INFONET programme.

The UGC-INFONET, set up by the Education and Research Network (ERNET), India, and the Universities Grants Commission (UGC), will provide state-of-the art communication infrastructure and services to academic and research institutions.

It operates a Very Small Aperture Terminal-based satellite Wide Area Network in C-Band for complementing its terrestrial backbone to extend the ERNET services.

For the successful implementation of the UGC-INFONET programme, the university has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the UGC and ERNET. The Bharathidasan University will be one among the 50 universities to have free access to e-journals and e-books in major research disciplines.

The INFLIBNET (Information and Library Network Centre), an autonomous Inter-University Centre (IUC) of the UGC, will be the nodal agency for facilitating linkage with the ERNET.

The programme will be funded by the UGC with 100 per cent capital investments. Under this scheme, a bandwidth of 512 kbps (kilo bytes per second) is provided to the user in the Single Channel Per Carrier.

The VSAT connectivity will be provided to the university through ERNET India, K. Meena, Convener, Vice-Chancellor Committee, told The Hindu .

The programme, the university authorities say, will become a vehicle for teaching quality distance education. Providing up-to-date information about the various schemes of the UGC, it will form a medium for collaboration among teachers and students in the country and abroad.

Through the UGC-INFONET programme, the authorities are planning to market the university's services globally and bring about a qualitative change in the university's interaction with the UGC.

The Informatics Centre at the university, equipped with 2 Mbps (Mega bytes per second) bandwidth Internet connectivity, will soon extend Internet facility to the its South and Khajamalai campuses. The main campus will have an intercom facility with the Voice over Internet Protocol-based EPABX (Electronic Private Automatic Branch Exchange) technology, Dr. Meena said.

The details of the university departments, Schools, Centres, curriculum, syllabi and applications could be accessed at the web site, `www.bdu.ac.in', she added.

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