The Hindu : Tamil Nadu News : Universities told to evolve own assessment mechanism

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Monday, Jul 28, 2008
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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu

Universities told to evolve own assessment mechanism

Staff Reporter

MADURAI: Universities offering distance education should consider evolving their own assessment and accreditation mechanism to monitor the functioning of their study centres, said V.N. Rajasekharan Pillai, Vice Chancellor, Indira Gandhi National Open University and Chairman, Distance Education Council, here on Saturday.

Inaugurating the two-day meeting of the coordinators of the Madurai Kamaraj University distance education admission centres in Tamil Nadu and programme officers of study centres in other States and in other countries, he said that once such mechanism was put in operation, quality would be ensured.

At the recent meeting with State Education Ministers organised by the Ministry of Human Resource Development it was decided to increase the contribution of the distance education from the present 15 to 18 per cent to 40 per cent.

Urging the coordinators to take a pro active role in organising capacity building programmes for the industrial workers, he said that the coordinators could identify the type of skill and knowledge required for the development of the community it served. Further, they could inform the university to design a course that would cater to the needs of the society, he added.

“Only five per cent of the workforce in the country has some sort of certification in support of their qualification, whereas the figure is 85 per cent in South Korea and 80 per cent in other developed countries,” he said. He stressed on the universities not to look at distance education courses as money spinner. The money generated from the courses had to be pumped back to develop facilities and ensure quality.

Presiding, R. Karpaga Kumaravel, Vice-Chancellor, MKU, said the university was considering a proposal to install interactive voice response system to provide information of the 1,23,000 students of Directorate of Distance Education.

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