ADDING EFFECTIVENESS TO THE ON GOING DISTANCE

EDUCATION PROGRAME
by
Lalit Mohan Joshi & Bhawana Joshi

Education is one of the most important factors in achieving the developmental goals of
the country. It is the key to the national development. It is an investment in the human
resources. If the fruits of education have to reach to common man, it must be adequately
and properly administered.
The importance of education can be interpreted from the reply to the question asked from
Aristotle. The question asked was, “How much better educated men were than those who
were uneducated?” The reply was “As much as living are than the dead.”
The New education Policy also accords high priority to education in the process of
development. Education has an acculturating role. It refines sensitivities and perceptions
that contribute to national cohesion, a scientific temper and independence of mind and
spirit thus furthering the goal of socialism, secularism and democracy enshrined in our
constitution.
If an educational system has to be relevant to the society in which it operates it needs to
be effectively respond to the demand of that society .In other words socio-political
changes, which colour and shape social needs greatly influence educational systems. As a
result new systems emerge and it is a continuous process and it leads to the emergence of
distance education.
Distance education System is a device to provide education to distant students as well as
reduce communication gap between the distant students as well as the teacher.

The relevant characteristics of distance education are;

• Division of labhour in the teaching process which allows rationalization of the
elements of the teaching process
• Use of technical equipments to ensure a product of constant quality
• Application of organizational principles to cut down unnecessary effort on the
part of those teaching and those learning
• The use of technical media such as television and radio to replace teachers and
cater for volume
• Testing of the product, the teaching package to eliminate mistakes and
guarantee a standard
• Monitoring of the teaching systems by sufficient methods to maintain quality
and standards

Distance education involves very specialized knowledge and competence in a variety of

fields such as curriculum development and the development and production of
educational material, communicational skill related to media, information marketing,
counseling of the students, study support and tuition distribution and delivery of materials
and organization of teaching activities often in collaboration with local partners.
Thus, distance education is aimed at teaching, guiding and supporting the students in all
locations through well designed lecture scripts, Supported by tutors, personal contact
programs, response sheet assignments and electronic media.

Diagram

Amongst the various important pillars of distance education technological support is the
foremost factor .it has highly significant role to play in a developing country like ours in
reaching to distance students.
Communication media and technology is the application of modern techniques and
resources to meet educational needs of the learner in order to adjust according to the
environment and to make subject matter more comprehensible, attractive and at the same
time ensure the retention factor
Its primary role is to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the entire teaching
learning process through a systems approach putting to use modern communication
technologies and the media.
The main aim of new technology based on electronic media is to supplement the
instructional material with electronic media to keep the learners motivated, well informed
and move towards self learning practices which would make him slowly and slowly into
an independent learner.
Hence the responsibility of the distance education institutes is to guide the distant
learners in the choice of new technology and how to operate it. However at present the
faculty of distance education is not making use of this technology in preparing
instructional material.
In order to ascertain the usage of the technological support by the distant learner a
research study was conducted by my co-investigator and me recently.

Hypothesis: In the present study it has been assumed that distance education learners are
well informed about various technological resources and they make the fullest use of it
for the realization of their objectives.

Sample: A sample of about sixty four (64) students undergoing the B.Ed. course of
IGNOU was purposefully selected for the study.

Tools & Procedure: A questionnaire containing a total of 12 items were developed out
of which 10 items were to be answered in YES or NO. Item no 11 was related to the
preference of the respondents.
Item no 12 was a subjective item inviting their views these items were prepared by us
after continuous experience at the study center of DLP.
The above questionnaire was administered during the B.Ed. workshop held at M.B. Govt.
P.G college, Haldwani
After collecting the filled forms, analysis using the non-parametric statistics was carried
out by us.
On the basis of the statistics the following results were obtained.

Results:

Table 1.01

1) 77% of the learners agree that the knowledge of various technological resources
was provided at their study center.
2) 94% of the learners were aware of the various technological resources, which
support their studies.
3) Only 37% of the learners watch educational TV broadcast which support their
studies.
4) Only 28% of the learners have ever watched educational TV broadcast relevant
to their courses.
5) Only 26% of the learners are alert about the date and topic of the talk to be
broadcast by AIR.
6) 64% of the learners agree that technological media are most useful than the
lecture script provided to them.
7) 59 % of the learners accept that lecture scripts and personal contacts suffice their
needs at IGNOU.
8) About 45% of the learners asked for the help of technological resources related to
their programme at their center.
9) Only 19% of the learners referred the books available at the library of the study
center.
10) A huge percentage of the learners are of the opinion that technological support
would have been beneficial to them
11) Only 15 % of the learners give importance to technological support where as
46% of the learners believe that Personal Contact Program (PCP) as a major
support to learning.

Conclusions:
The results stated above reveal that a major population is aware of the various
technological resources like television, radio broadcast, internet, educational CDs,
audio cassettes but they hardly make use of such broadcast to support their studies.
The results establish that the learners accept the importance of technological
resources over the conventional methods. Further the results show that the learners
make least use of easily accessible resources like the library at their study center.
Despite of the opinion that technical resources are beneficial to –Technology must be
them but they insist out rightly on Personal Contact Program (PCP) and lecture script
to help the out. This result can be interpreted taking into consideration of their
prolonged exposure to the traditional means and non- accessibility of technological
resources.
Measures/Suggestions For The Effective Use Of Technological Support:

I. of criteria must be given a consideration like-

a. Availability- Technology must be well established in a local environment.
b. Accessibility- The chosen technology must be easily available to all the
students or at least in the study center.
c. Acceptability- The attitude of the teachers and the students must be positive
towards the use of technology.
d. Validity- It must be appropriate to the instructional objectives and contents
that constitute the courses.
e. Economics- The results must justify the cost incurred.
Apart from the above criteria some more criteria like Quality, Specificity,
Sensitivity should be taken into consideration.
II. On the basis of the above set criteria, a design of the Technological
Resource Centre (TRC)which encompasses the various modes of
communication has been suggested by us-

Diagram

In the above model of TRC weightage has been given to –

Mass communication – (Room No 1) which includes radio and television
broadcast, cable TV, pay TV, library which contains reference books,
audio- video cassettes and CDs.
Knowledge Technologies – (Room No 2,3) which includes multimedia
learning packages, teaching machines, and knowledge packages
Personalised communication –(Room No 4) which includes telephone,
cellular phones, internet, fax and e-mail. With regards to the
administration, the centre should have an executive committee
comprising of the head of the above three resource rooms. They will
function in mutual co-ordination and in co-ordination with the centre co-
ordinator. Some assistants may be provided to assist the task as per the
work load.

III. The Technological Resource Centre should display the schedule of

various radio and TV broad well in advance on their display board.
IV. In order to make the maximum use of the TRC the students and the staff
must be made aware of the various resources available in it. The staff
should be trained accordingly.
 V. Academic weightage in terms of marks/grades should be awarded to
those students who make use of technological support in writing their
assignments.
VI. The courseware of the DLP must contain certain practicals, which
would check the student’s versatility in handling technological support.
VII. Knowledge Technologies, one of the components of TRC besides
giving knowledge can evaluate the learners performance on various
aspects of different courses and grade them accordingly from time to
time.
VIII. Educational material i.e. .CDs and Cassettes should be according to the
needs of the learners and not on the model of foreign material.
IX. Audio and Video lessons should be integrated with the counseling
schedules.

It is high time that we realize the inherent potentialities of distance education system and
improve upon it as mentioned in our research paper. The benefits of distance education
system can percolate to the country and its people in the 21st century provided we run the
distance education programes through intellectual planning , genuine implementation and
constant evaluation to ensure perfect and dynamic system .
Thank You