 So, good evening ma'am and welcome to the Krishnakanta Handic State of an University. We are indeed very, very happy that you are here with us. You are in the helm of affairs of the entire domain of the open and distance learning and at many point of time there are doubts at various segments, at various levels as to what would be the future of the whole ODL system. So, what is your feeling about it? How do you see ODL in the next 20, 25 years? What is your view on it? You know it is very interesting that in developing countries, open and distance learning as we know it is growing phenomenally. You know that in our own country, we have 17 open universities, you know 15 public and two private. In Africa, again the open universities are growing, dedicated single mode universities. In fact, this month, on 1st December, a new open university has been established in Botswana by an act of parliament, by the government. So in developing countries, most governments are seeing open universities as a way forward for increasing access to quality education at lower costs. In developed countries, for example in Canada, where the common wealth of learning is located, we had three open universities, dedicated open universities. Now there is only one left. The other two have merged with campus universities. It is a different type of thing, you know here we have campus universities and they offer distance learning. Their distance and education institutions have merged with campus universities. And the reason is because of the growth of technology, every institution is now doing online learning. So there the tendency is not to have any further dedicated institutions for distance education, but in our part of the world in Asia, for example, there are more than 70 distance open and distance learning universities. So this trend is going to continue to grow. So I think we are quite safe, we have a good future, but the good future will depend upon the quality and about ability to compete with emerging trends. Madam, why have they done that? Why these universities have merged with campus universities? See there are several reasons, you know political reasons are there also that the political will was not there to have them continue. The second is that the distinction between an open university and a campus university is blurring. Blurring, it is getting thinner. Because many people you know about I think more than 35% in the US are doing one or two courses using distance learning even though they are enrolled in the campus. So in the developed world because of the growth of technology, there is no need really to have this dedicated distance learning institution. So that is probably the reason. Thank you. That brings us to the issue of this. Developing countries is the developing countries. So as you have rightly stated in the developed countries, because of the technology enabled factors, so they are in a better position to disseminate the information to reach to the various categories of people. Although in our country also, we talk about recently, we have been talking a lot about ICT, ICT and able delivery mechanism. But here we have been in Assam, we can come to the grassroot level issues. In our university also, we are trying to promote the mobile apps, computer based learning and all those things. But in the far-flung areas connectivity is a problem. The real these are the infrastructural issues are there. Because of all these things, we have not been able to take the maximum advantage of the ICT enabled devices. But although this is a call of the day and responding to this call of the day, most of the open universities in developed countries, they are doing so well. What is your take on this? See the growth in technology in developing countries has been mostly in mobile devices. Not in computers or laptops or anything, it is mostly mobile devices. And that is where, that is the technology we should tap. And if we are looking at remote areas, how can we reach people through radio? Radio is still a very relevant technology in some of the remote areas. Basic mobile phones, people do not have smart phones, but they do have basic mobile phones which give us the ability to interact even verbally through voicemail and so on with those people. So, we should actually see how we can harness the available, affordable and accessible technologies to reach the last person in the queue in remote areas. That is the silence for the ODI institutions. It is, it is. Another very important concerns that we have here too, that is regarding the quality issues. Here most of the people think that the open and distance learning is a second great arrangement in comparison to the campus system. Now here too, we are trying our best to see, to eat, that we provide best of quality of things to the learners. We are trying our best. We are putting our resources in it. But it is true that the mindset is gradually declining in that part. But at the same time, what we also find that there, sometimes there is a sudden searchers of the activities that the open and distance learning is not what of the present generation because it is too technical, too sophisticated to be addressed by the open and distance learning. So, this mindset and the quality issues on the other hand, how do you go for it, ma'am? It is a very challenging thing for us. You know, there are two reasons why people have this poor perception about ODL in our countries. One is the earlier correspondence courses were not very learner centric. You dump the material on the student and expect them to do exams. So, obviously it was considered of lower quality. The second is that some of the providers are not following the quality parameters properly. Because if we do ODL well and this research has shown you know, there is a book which is called No Significant Difference in which they have done a meta-analysis of hundreds of studies about you know the difference between distance learning and campus learning. And there is no significant difference in the outcomes from either mode. Okay. That is very interesting. So that is one. Another studies are that if you look at online and face-to-face again, this was a study done by a person in South Korea who again did a meta-analysis and they found that distance online learning costs half of what face-to-face costs and yet the outcomes are exactly the same. Same. There is no difference in the outcomes. Okay. The key thing to remember is that while there is no significant difference, it has to be done well. That is true. Are we doing it well? This is a question we have to ask ourselves. Because you know, anything that we do, it is for the student. Different students learn in different ways. How are we reaching them? How are we responding to their needs? How are we addressing the issues which they face? I mean, if we can answer yes to those questions, that means, yes, we are doing well. But are we? Yes, ma'am. Now, for the benefit of your information in our university also, last year, one research project was completed and that ultimately led to the award of PhD degree. That was about the effectiveness of, from the learner's perspective, face-to-face mode versus OGL mode in tourism and hospitality sector. And different statistical tests were contacted based on responses. And it was found, like as you have pointed out in some other context, the same. There is no significant difference between F2F mode and OGL mode. So, that is okay from the tourism and hospitality sector, but from the macro perspective, one, something we find is a kind of dichotomous thing that you also have stated about that. But still, my mind is not fully clear. What is democratization of education? We talk about inclusive growth. We may talk about inclusive education also. Now, if we talk about inclusive education, we will have to start from the base. So, base could be the certificate courses, the diploma courses, etc. From the learner's perspective, we will go for the inclusive education. And as you have rightly stated that we may make use of technology-enabled factors, accessible, affordable, but the thing is that we will try to go for democratization of education. But in the perspective, we might somehow may be required to compromise the quality issues. Maybe in terms of the networking relationships, because the open universities are not kind of standalone institutions. They have to depend upon a number of partners, educational partners, could be the study centers, the counselors and all those things. So, going at this from the macro perspective, going for the larger objective of democratization of education, then reconciling the quality issues, how to strike the balance somewhere or other. See, there is a difference between massification and democratization. But democratization means more equity, which leads to equality of opportunity. So, we must make that distinction between massification and democratization. That is the first point. The second is that democratization does not mean dilution of quality. You can democratize. But in distance education, there are three very important components. One is the academic component, which is the quality of the materials we give to the students. The second is the learner support. And the third is the administration, management and administration. That is the third dimension. How well have we created systems which are so robust that we are able to meet the large numbers of students. And that is why it is good to have sometimes an evolutionary approach that you increase the numbers when the system can take the weight of those numbers. And one of the areas where we are really the weakest perhaps is learner support. We are not giving the kind of learner support that the students are getting in different universities in some of the top universities, ODL institutions in the world. For example, I mean research has shown that the drop out rate in open universities is very high. One of the factors is that we the students join with a great deal of motivation. Gradually they lose that motivation and they drop out. What can we do about it? People have made lots of recommendations. And one of the recommendation is that keep the student engaged. Be in constant touch with the student. Earlier it was difficult. How do you stay in touch? You know because maybe they came to the study center for the personal contact programs. But other than that there was no way of keeping them constantly engaged. But now all the students have WhatsApp on their phones. How can we link them all to each other and to our centers and to our counselors? That is one. You know how to keep them engaged. The second is how to give them quick feedback. Because of this massification and you know the large numbers we are very late in giving the feedback on assignments and the kind of feedback we get give is very not helpful at all. I mean it is just general kind of feedback which you give to the PhD student that rewrite this. For an undergraduate and lower levels you need to be more structured and more specific in what they have to do differently to do better. So I think there are certain things which we can do to change our own practices. That is true. And if we do that then I think we can compete with anybody in the world. In that regard may I express an apprehension. Apprehension means that the motivation is a very complex phenomena. The kind of things that you have mentioned is mostly would be highly applicable for the genuine learners those who are having the genuine learning needs. So we can think about keeping them engaged. But some maybe may not be a significant majority but some learners may not have that kind of genuine needs. They just take the enrollment and they just want to get through. So you say my point is it is a two-way thing. From our side we can do it. We are doing it. Maybe we are lacking it. We can keep on we may think about improving on it. But the learners may not be they might detest themselves. So keeping them engaged how to develop that kind of motivation? See even those learners that you say who are only there to you know enroll and get through with the degree and are not genuinely interested in learning for them that is the motivation to get that piece of paper. So even they are motivated. How do we still keep them motivated? The others who are genuine learners are self-motivated you know. I do not think they need much help from us. They will do on their own yes. They will do. But I think the ones who are not motivated are the ones we have to motivate. Because on us lies with us the OGL service providers. Yes and recently we have done a you know survey of 27 Commonwealth Open Universities and we sent out questionnaires and we asked people what were their big achievements? What was the pass rate? And on average this is including the British Open University, including Athabasca University in Canada including our universities. The average qualification rate and the earth you know people who are qualifying from our system is not more than 15 percent and in some cases it is even 2 percent. So how do we increase those numbers? And how do we actually not just provide access but also success? That is this low pass percent is not a demotivating factor. This 15 percent is only coming out successful. 15 is very low. Yes. I mean 2 is even worse. Yes. But you know we have to increase the numbers. How do we do it? And I think engaging genuinely the students. And for that I think our own staff that deals with the you know learner support system have to be constantly trained and retrained. And all the new methods which are coming out whether it is assessment techniques and so on, how to motivate people etc, how to do good counselling, how to do good tutoring. That kind of training and retraining we need to continue to invest in. That is a very good investment. Investment on faculty development. Learner support people, our faculty is everything. That is very important. And I am coming to the quality issues again of the various quality parameters which would you like to emphasize the most? There are many parameters, the components for a region like North East India which is economically very poor in spite of having huge economic resources. The per capita growth rate is very low. The most of the people are very poor. So, quality ma'am suffers in the number of stages. So, for a university like us, what would be your advice? Then do this first. Well, I mean we all know what the quality you know inputs, processes and outputs are. And earlier it used to be input which was the major factor of quality and the process. Now it is the output. What is it that you are achieving? But I think for an institution like this one, and I will give you one example from institution in Uganda, it is a teacher training institute. And every weekend they have the students come to certain designated after, from very far, some come on bicycles, some come walking very similar to this region. And the counsellors are tutoring them, the tutors are tutoring them in those sessions. And I was very impressed and touched really when I found that if a student doesn't come for two counselling lessons, you know for two weekends, the poor counsellors and tutors are also themselves poor, they are sitting on the, they are getting on the bicycle. They are going to the house of the student and asking them what happened, why didn't you come? There is no technology involved here. So, if you ask my opinion that what is the biggest factor of quality which this institution should have, I would call it the culture of care. Yes, care for your students. You know that culture of care if we have each one of our tutors, our faculty members, our administrators think that you know every learner is important. What can I do to ensure that nobody gets you know left out, that's it. So, if you ask me for one advice, let us create a culture of care and then everything falls in place. The rest is all you know you can take the boxes as many times as you like, but unless you care for the students and the learners, nothing really you know the significant outcomes. Thank you very much, thank you very much. That's a very important point that quality has to be imbibed and that learner's sensitivity and this is an organization wide university wide phenomenon from the faculty members as well as the support staff service providers. Everyone will have to imbibe that quality orientation, that's very important. But somehow or other, once again I am expressing the suppose we are talking about learner's sensitivity. Say in one of the open universities, they have organized all the exams in one centered only, state capital. Suppose we think about doing the same thing, replicating the same exercise here in Assam, some of the learners will give a complaint that you are not taking care of the learners, but the university will take care of that thing just to simplify the processes and to streamline the evaluation system etc. So, they are also possibly would have to find our own ways out to strike the balances. Means how to give the maximum of the learner, learner care at the same time not geo-paradising our operational deficiencies. You know what we have done actually is for our own operational convenience, we have cut many things which are absolutely critical for the learner. Let us not do that, let us not look only for operational convenience. I know it is important, but as you said there has to be a balance between the two. But always I think if we keep the learner at the center, then that culture of care can be embedded within the institution and that will lead us automatically to make the right choices to do the right thing for the students. Whenever in conflict just take that as a guiding principle. Exactly. Yes. What is your view about the how MOOC could be a very effective instrument and the whole learning process of the open and distance system. How MOOC could help us? You know MOOC a massive open online course for those who do not know what MOOC is. Firstly, it is a very important development in higher education and it is coming to other areas also. It creates a connected classroom around the world because when you offer a MOOC anybody anywhere in the world can take it. But as far as our students are concerned, some of them at this point may not be in a position to connect. If we use a high technology option, but at the Commonwealth of Learning what we have done is we have created MOOCs for development, which means that a MOOC can be offered using an interface with a mobile phone and using a blended approach. So, I think there are two three dimensions. One is let me first complete this one that we ran a MOOC for Mali's. Mali's are gardeners and this was done in Uttar Pradesh area and the Mali's had basic cell phones. The gardeners had basic cell phones and they could actually access all the content about horticulture on their basic mobile phone in Hindi. So, you know that language barrier was not there, they could understand, they learnt a lot and when they needed to get in touch with experts, we mobilized certain call centers where they could actually ring up 24-7 and get answers to whatever were their problems or issues or questions from experts. So, there are different ways of- That is the blending, that means it was not entirely online. And for example, the other MOOC for development example in Sierra Leone, it is a remote country, very poor, one of the least developed countries in the Commonwealth. We offered a MOOC on using mobiles for learning and people were interested in that, but they said we do not have the bandwidth on the computer for downloading the content. So, you send us the content on a CD-ROM. So, we sent all the content on the CD-ROM, so they could put it in the thing and they could go offline and look at that and they saved the bandwidth for interaction with the peers and with the tutors. So, they found a solution and these are the kinds of ways in which we have to try to not exclude anybody. Let us use the MOOC platform, but let us see where how to reach those unreached people and create a blended approach because the other research what research shows is that in our part of the world in developing countries, the blended approach where there is some face-to-face interaction plus online works better than entirely online. So, I think we can do that. The other dimension of MOOC is that this MIT, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, what they have done is they are offering MOOCs. It is called the MicroMasters. You can do some credits on a MOOC which is I mean the content is free, but for the certification you have to pay a small amount and then once you have passed that when you come to the masters in MIT, one semester you get exemption from. So, even our government is talking about that in India that you can do 20 percent of your degree on SWIM and you know carry the credits towards the full degree you can this thing. So, I think these are interesting things, but the point to notice that when we do these interesting things we should not leave the last person in the queue behind. Let us carry them along. The message that we have got from this interaction so far is that the emerging trends are there. The issues are also there. We will have to reconcile the issues and we will have to transform ourselves, the audio service providers and respond to the call of the days in terms of imbibing the ICT and quality orientation, learner's centricity. These are the things that we will have to take care of. And the last man in the last room will have to be taken care of. As for this university, we have already offered ourselves for the commonwealth of learning this what you call scanning or scrutiny. And we have already done it and we have got a new letter from this concerned office that the system could be renewed again. So, we are ready for another term of this cold room exercise and for that the university is getting ready for that and I seek your blessings for that. And we in the university were highly benefited out of the last exercise because when the immediate personalities came as the cold room reviewer many of the areas I came from the conventional system when I joined as the dean academic and here only during the course of the whole domain whole exercise that I came to know many of the dynamics of the ODL system. So, that I personally was highly benefited of the exercise and the university too it was a great exercise for us. And now I think in the coming years also the kind of mechanism your organization has developed the universities will definitely be benefited out of those exercise and we are very hopeful about that. Now, but I must congratulate KKSHOU for offering to undertake this exercise because it requires extra hard work. But at the end of it you came out very well from the whole process and this call review and improvement model is meant to create that culture of quality within the institution. So, by involving everybody and you know making them think about it you know reflect on various things they start thinking that you know how can I improve this. So, it is a very good exercise and I think the next phase is the follow up on the recommendations. So, thank you very much ma'am. It has been a pleasure. Thank you. It is good to see you again. You know a lot many and possibly you have developed some clarity also. These are all so many complex phenomena on quality motivation. We have discussed so many things and we have got some clarity with the interaction with you. Thank you ma'am. Thank you. And thank you very much for informing us that we are indeed safe. The campus is not a challenge to us. We are not getting merged into the campus anymore. No, no, but you know the thing is that like Mao Zedong said let a thousand flowers bloom. There is enough need in the world. So, there will be ODL institutions, there will be dual mode providers, there will be private providers, there will be cross-border providers, there will be move providers. Everybody has a place. The only thing is that our place of ODL we should really sort of try to make it stronger and more valuable for the student. And to that extent we are in an advantageous position. Thank you ma'am. Thank you very much.