The Hindu : Tamil Nadu News : Academic staff colleges to make teachers Internet literate

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Jun 30, 2004

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu

Academic staff colleges to make teachers Internet literate

By Our Staff Reporter

COIMBATORE, JUNE 29. Academic staff colleges of universities will encourage teachers to become `Internet literate,' Arun Nigavekar, Chairman, University Grants Commission, said here today.

At a meeting of directors of the University Grants Commission Academic Staff Colleges (UGC-ASC), organised by Bharathiar University, Dr. Nigavekar said electronic connectivity being provided to universities would bring them together for sharing resources.

Staff colleges were important for development of teachers and the programmes conducted by them ought to bring return on investment. A review committee was looking into the support structure of these colleges for making improvements and programmes carried out in a cost-effective manner.

Besides, data management and administrative activities would be carried out with greater efficiency through electronic governance being introduced in various universities.

When inviting speakers for staff college courses, the accent ought to be on whether they could add value to the experience of teachers. Sometimes a senior person might not be able to make an impact, compared to someone at the middle level who knew more about academic matters. Feedback was vital for evaluation of resource persons.

At times, it might not be necessary to hunt for resource persons outside, because there might be adequately-equipped persons available for the task within the academic circle.

He explained how students in a remote area were able to put their computers to good use, despite having slower connectivity and stable power supply only late at night. They were able to access academically-useful material that they might not have been able to obtain easily in any other way.

Dr. Nigavekar released a directory containing information on academic staff colleges in the country.

Pawan Aggarwal, Financial Adviser, UGC, said a comprehensive web site: www.ugc.ac.in was launched to help universities. "When we go in for e-governance, this portal will be useful. We will be happy if staff colleges organise brainstorming sessions in their universities about improvements that could be made to the web site," he said.

To encourage interaction among institutions, the UGC allowed online submission of forms and tracking of schemes on the web site. Staff colleges that were doing well ought to be rewarded and those that were not doing well helped to improve their performance.

N.K. Jain, Joint Secretary, UGC, urged institutions to send information on time so that the schedule for various courses could be drawn up early.

S. Sivasubramanian, Vice-Chancellor, Bharathiar University, said universities should, in addition to professional skills, develop entrepreneurial skills among students.

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