The Hindu : New Delhi News : UNESCO to certify IGNOU course in Journalism

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Nov 22, 2009
ePaper | Mobile/PDA Version

New Delhi

New Delhi

UNESCO to certify IGNOU course in Journalism

Staff Reporter

Adapted from UNESCO’s model curriculum
Symposium on media education held as part of IGNOU’s ongoing silver jubilee celebrations

NEW DELHI: The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) will jointly certify Indira Gandhi National Open University’s M.A. course in Journalism and Communications.

The course was adapted from the model journalism curriculum circulated by UNESCO in 2008.

UNESCO South Asia office director Armoogum Parsuramen made the announcement at a symposium on “Media Education, Challenges and Opportunities” organised by the School of Journalism and New Media Studies and UNESCO at IGNOU here on Saturday. The symposium was part of IGNOU’s ongoing silver jubilee celebrations.

Mr. Parsuramen said several other courses run by IGNOU too could be jointly certified by UNESCO in future. UNESCO was also ready to help universities like IGNOU to universalise the spread of education, train teachers and upgrade course material, he added.

Several issues related to media education were raised at the two-day symposium that began on Friday. Strategies were discussed to help young people critically engage with newspapers, magazines, television, radio and the Internet. The ways in which media works and affects society were examined. The importance of media literacy among the public was discussed in addition to talks on collaborative institutional mechanisms on media literacy and framing a media policy for India.

Academicians from JNU, the Tamil Nadu Open University and journalism educators from Nepal, Bangladesh and Maldives attended the symposium.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

New Delhi