Open university to link education, development

[sajiv]

Open university to link education, development

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The proposed Kerala Open University (KOU) will be an institution to link education to development, which, in turn, will lead to sustainable social transformation, the former Vice-Chancellor of the Indira Gandhi National Open University Ram Takwale has said.

He was speaking to presspersons here on Thursday after submitting the report of a three-member committee chaired by him to study the feasibility of instituting an open university in the State.

He said the KOU would be a "mass university" which would cooperate with other universities instead of competing with them. Courses in the new university would be geared towards skill development and the application of those skills to a person's workplace or livelihood. The course content would be technology-mediated.

The university would use wiki-processes to generate and use Open Resources.

It would deploy a Learning Management System to create a 'linked' society of students and teachers.
Connected communities

"The report proposes extensive use of Information Society technologies for creating new connected communities of learning, teachers, experts and institutions supporting and employing people in education and development," a pressnote distributed on the occasion read.

The KOU would follow a study centre mode of learning with distributed classrooms. Eventually the university would act as a platform offering its own courses and those of other universities. The university and its cyber infrastructure would be fashioned in such a manner that it is able to absorb changes in the knowledge society in a relevant manner.

This 'Future Now' model of the university would essentially depend on certain processes: e-infrastructure and networking for creating connected communities, development and deployment of open resources, social organisations such as Kudumbasree, their development and e-social governance, feedback, analytics, reforms and social transformation and the e-social governance of all learners, learning processes, organisations and transformations.

The KOU should have linkages with all government departments, Dr. Takwale.

The structure would enable everybody, from the Governor, the Chief Minister and the Education Minister down to each government department, to contribute to the functioning of the university, he said.