 I extend my hearty welcome to Professor Saraj Basu, former Director of Distance Education Council, Professor Manjulika Sivastava, currently the Director of Distance Education Council and Professor P.K. Bishas, the Professor Stride Igno. Actually, we are assembling here to have a discussion on the role of counselor in an open-and-distance learning system, particularly the Kishnak and related to Kishnak and the Handing State Open University. We have at the moment about 190 study centers and in all the 1990s study centers we have about 1700 counselors mostly related to the colleges where we have the study centers and all the counselors including us also we are educated in the conventional system. Normally we are acquainted with the face-to-face type of teaching learning process that since the open-and-distance learning is quite different from the conventional system we thought that we have some discussion on the role of counselors in counseling the learners and so can I request Professor Basu to start with what should be the basic role of the counselors and then Professor Sivastava and Professor Bishas would also talk on that discussion. Thank you Professor Barva for inviting us in the small but beautiful studio of KK Handing State Open University to have a discussion on the role of counselors in the State Open University and how they can be a better facilitator for the learners who have joined various programs of the University. Now as you have rightly said that being product of the conventional system both the students as well as the teachers have a general tendency to have the face-to-face teaching to adopt when they come to the counseling centers in various study centers. Now we have to differentiate between the classroom teaching and the counseling. Now in any open university course a program consists of number of courses in your university it is the number of papers so in each paper if it is of 100 marks paper it is generally conceived that minimum 10 to 12 counseling sessions of each counseling session minimum two to two and a half hours are needed for the completion of the particular paper of 100 marks. Now what is expected to be done by the counselors in the counseling session I feel that is the question before us. Now why the term counseling is used as the Professor Vishwas with us with specialization is in psychology he can correct me counseling originated from the discipline of psychology and where the psychologist act as a counselors to the people who visit the psychologist to deliver it discussed share their problems so that I think the basic notion or idea behind adopting the terminology counseling in open and distance learning system he can add better than me on this but what generally we understand and we explain to the counselors that it is perceived that when the students come to the study center for counseling they are expected to go through the study materials provided to the students in advance and along with study centers they are also provided with a program guide which gives an broad idea of the different paper or courses in a particular program say in a particular counseling session when the students come the job of the counselors should be in the first counseling session to make the student familiar with the methodology of open and distance learning what the student is expected to do in in a counseling session what kind of problems they may face in open and distance learning system how they try to resolve that problem and the counselor acts as a guide in the process of learning in in the open and distance learning system the students are expected to come with specific problem and the job of the counselor is to solve the problem in consultation with the students the problems may be pertinent to the subject pertinent to that particular topic may be pertinent to the grasping of the subject or particular topic that the counselor is expected to explain with involvement in the subject with empathy to the need of the students and try to help him or her in the process so that the difficulty in the absence of the teacher in a classroom situation that the learner is facing that gets minimized yes here the learners my impression is that the learners under our university in various study centers they have a very high expectation they assume that the teachers will come every day and take classes from 10 to 3 or 10 to 4 to 5 classes every day they will take just like a conventional system so this idea make the whole system of counseling classes problematic for the counselors as well as for the study center usually you see in the open in the audience system the academic counselors as we call them you know they are all teachers from the convention system so they also are not very familiar with their role as academic counselors you see they have two roles to perform they have a they have to perform the role of a tutor that is they provide subject based expertise they should have so that they can provide tutoring support that is academic support to the learner and also we have induction programs where we orient the counselors to have the humanistic qualities because in in the context of education the counseling what Professor Basu was mentioning it is emanated from the from psychology but in education context we use the concept of Carl Rogers he was a very famous psychologist who propounded this theory of humanistic counseling and in the educational context we we follow that method of counseling where the counselor has to engage the learner in problem solving approach he has to adopt and it is just not the academic problems that a learner encounters but also the personal problems that he encounters during the course of his learning endeavor and therefore these counseling sessions are being organized but unfortunately the academic counselors they are not very familiar with their role so they have to be told in fact through the orientation program that they are not supposed to transact the entire curriculum or that of a particular course through the face-to-face component the face-to-face component is just limited to 10 percent of the total you know study hours allotted to a learner now I would like to explain this in the context of the credit system that open universities have adopted we follow a credit system whereby the learners are you know given the information beforehand that if they are pursuing a six months program so their program will be of 12 to 16 credits and one credit is actually the study input required is equal to 30 study hours so if a learner is enrolled for a six month certificate program so he will have to attend that many counseling sessions say about 12 into 30 hours will be around 360 study hours is the input required which includes not only is going through the material writing the notes in the course material you know that is total number of hours here exactly and 10 percent of that 360 hours is allotted to the face-to-face component so if you see 316 is 36 hours so 36 hours will again get reduced to will be divided among number of sessions according to the number of courses the sessions will be allotted and they will be equally distributed so we have you know I mean so therefore the number of sessions is very limited the counselor cannot transact the entire curriculum in those 36 hours that is 360 hours of you know is not possible to be you know they cannot do the justice to a particular program by providing them lectures and what happens the learners also the kind of background they come from they are we you know in our culture we are used to that spoon feeding yes the learners expect everything from the teacher and I think I don't blame them because they are quite unfamiliar with the ODL methodology of teaching learning and I think that is why induction program is necessary for the learner so that they know what is expected of them as a distance learner so so do we like to suggest to the counselors that they at the beginning of the any academic session they will have the induct induction classes to the new learners no in fact we we should make it compulsory that at when when a new academic session starts all the new entrants should be invited to an induction program at the study center study center is the place where all the face-to-face counseling sessions are conducted and at these sessions maybe one person from the headquarters should be ideally present and all the counselors so that there can be also ice-breaking counseling session can be held immediately after the inauguration and in the ice-breaking session which is a very important session when we start this new program then the academic counselor will meet the students because you see counseling is again not a compulsory component so there's another side to the story when it's not compulsory there there will be a situation when students may not attend the counseling sessions yeah for students not to attend counseling sessions that is equally demotivating for the counselors who with a lot of enthusiasm opt for taking up this part-time assignment at KK Handig Open University they want to take up counseling activity but when they don't have any learners coming for the class for these face-to-face sessions they get very demotivated so at this ice-breaking session the counselors can be you know given this they can impart the basic knowledge to the learners that how they are going to transact the curriculum in this 10 percent of the total study are what we are discussing now if this can be told to the learners at the very beginning and what they should do to come prepared for the counseling sessions and counselors can then you know I mean the learners would know what they are supposed to do the counselors would also be you know accordingly they will prepare themselves because even the counselors as you rightly pointed out they do not know they just come and give lectures because they do not know what are the techniques now these counseling sessions can be handled in a very different manner from a face-to-face classroom situation which the conventional teachers are used to there the students can be they have to conduct a lot of group-based activities because what is the role of the counseling session the role of the counseling session is to help the learner interact with the course material that is the basic purpose and how they are going to make the learner interact with the course material is the purpose of the counseling session and the counselor is a medium so if the counselor has to do that he should know what are the techniques so normally what we do is we in the orientation for the academic counselors we give them we in fact have more counseling sessions in the as part of that orientation where we train them and we tell them that what are the techniques they can use for counseling the distance learner I think Professor Biswas would like to share those his experiences or what are the techniques they can use for and also some positive side negative side of the counselors so I just since professor Biswas is next part in the particular area sir regarding you also give some highlight on the counselors role in the evolution of the assignment that is also very important definitely we'll come to the evolution but later on now before that taking clue from professor Basu and Sivas presentations now I can say that I can give some tips to the counselors how they can manage the counseling sessions because it has been told that counseling is not tutoring and it is very much true counseling is not tutoring the counselors task is to provide information at the time at the time of provide guidance and to help the learners to learn how to learn in the system that is the thing how to learn they help the learner to develop study skills and they help the learners to learn time management skills so this kind of skills they can help the learner to develop during counseling sessions also some tips I like to keep the counselors specific counseling sessions this first thing is that they should create a positive and friendly environment a friendly environment because from psychological point of view I'm telling because the distance learners they have a different kind of psychology when they're coming to the session but we know what is Odile system and we know how to tackle the students in the counseling sessions but they will expect something as you told at the beginning they expect something but we are going to give them something so there is a class between their expectations and our giving so they should create a positive friendly impressions and then what the students will feel the students will feel that they'll understand that yes the counselor is with him if you created this kind of environment then you establish rapport and show empathy from Zabasu use the word empathy is very important thing that you feel the way the learners feel then you build up your counseling sessions and you reassure the students about the system and you tell that this is the system if you follow the guidelines given by us you will definitely be able to do better in the system so students will feel that yes we understand them and we will care for them if we show this kind of behavior then I will suggest the counselors to be a very active listeners because they should listen first from the students they should not start giving lectures and whatever they know but they should listen first they should ask them the questions that what is the problem they are facing and they should acknowledge their stand and to become an active listener they should develop some kind of skills to become active listeners first they should acknowledge what the students wants to convey then they confirm there are various ways to confirm it acknowledge and confirm that yes they can say yes I am listening to you they can nod the heads they can they can say something yes yes as you are as you are doing when I am talking to you or sometimes telling yes and this is called acknowledgement confirming that what I am telling that means you are an active listener at this moment that they also should follow the same procedure and they ask and clarifications from the students also if they don't understand what the students want to convey they can ask for clarifications now through this activity what will happen the psychology band is that students can develop his or her own thinking and they may be willing to act independently if you go on like this then the most important thing is to provide information related to the content and visual aids use of visual aids is very much important most of the counseling sessions the counselors they don't use in visual aids they just deliver lectures but we suggest that you use visual aids as much as possible and when you ask the questions to the students ask the relevant questions only and you allow the students to ask questions also that is also very much it should be totally interactive sessions not the lecture interactive sessions and encourage the learners for group discussions encourage the learners for debate encourage the learner for brainstorming debate is very important you give the topic and tell them your debate you just observe then you give your comments also you can have these panel discussions panel discussions group discussions you can have brainstorming sessions you can go for another technique snowballing techniques small two persons can discuss something then another two persons can join in this session so many techniques are there so that can be that the counselors can be trained independently but they should know that there are various techniques are there they can use the techniques depending on the learner target group and discipline also that is very important and the counselors all the time should provide the feedback during the counseling sessions also that is also very important and I have talked about study skills they should give them some tips how to develop the study skills how they can study because self-learning material is already there that is the teachers activities and functions are inbuilt features of SLM so there is no need to explain it again and again only the difficult points in how to go about it that should be the task of the counselors actually all of you are suggesting that the main role should be guide that the role of a counselor should be guide to the student not only the guide of the academic meter the other meters how to study difficult concept clarification that is also there but how to study so they should be the independent learner that is the main part sir actually you see counseling for the counselor he has to do academic counseling that is subject related personal counseling which will be individual related and third is administrative you see there are admin that is called non-academic counseling where there could be problems related to non-recit materials or assignment grades have not been you know I mean incorporated in the grade sheet so where will the learner go the learner will go to the counselor because the counselor is the face of the university for the learner you see he's the he or she is the only person with whom the learner interacts when I mean the purpose of providing local supporters opening study centers and appointing counselors there so the counselor has to be fully familiar with the entire system yes it's just not that he's a subject expert and he just knows that and that somebody who that is why an orientation program for the counselor is necessary so that they get familiar with the entire setup how the university functions and also they should be you know provided with latest updates about the university and we can also inform these counselors that simply going to face to face session the counseling doesn't end there because there could be some learners who are very busy and the timings may not suit them but in the first induction meeting when they meet the counselor the counselor may should provide all kind of you know channels of communication like provide their own mobile numbers and so that they can be communication should be kept alive between the students and the counselor just because the person doesn't attend the face-to-face session that means he has no you know support yes you see in the in an educational experience to make an educational program a complete educational experience a good experience for the learner there has to be avenues for interaction between the teacher and the taught and also some kind of a feedback on performance so what you suggested that we can also use the technology yes some learner cannot come say working in some office some learner may not be able to come or be some it's possible they can be in touch with with the counselor using the telephone or email yes now one problem problems of what i feel here not only in the odl system in the regular system if a student a quick check then they never open them out so here here also in the odl system even if the counselor asks the learners to get prepared himself or herself before the counseling class and we tell them to ask questions to the counselor but they never ask it so what will be the role of the counselor how they will get the mind of the learners exactly that is what professor sarvastav professor wishes all are pointed out the first lesson start with the counselor he has to understand how his role is different from the role of a teacher in a conventional system that is the first then he has to understand the functioning of the open and distance learning system and more particularly the informations relevant for the learners in the particular open university and third the question that you have put that when the students are not coming forward yes because the students should also try to learn how the students in open and distance learning is different from the students in a regular system so there the role of the counselor ideally should be as they have suggested that there are the different techniques in the if suppose i am the counselor to a particular course in the first session i would try to explain first my role first then what the university is expected to do in this particular program for facilitating the learning and then third how the learner in open and distance learning is different from the regular students then i would try to create an interest among them by suggesting difference devices as they say is that it can be in the form of a debate it can be in the form of a group discussion it can be in the form of a competition among the learners giving five ten minutes time to speak on that particular area and then as had been said that the counselor has to be a very good listeners observing the individual students responding to this he or she should be able to identify the weaknesses or the strengths in different learners and accordingly try to motivate or integrate them in the counseling sessions it's a very difficult proposition but there is no easy way out depending on a particular situation the counselor has to be innovative and has to come out with situation specific solution focusing on the goal is to ease your hard job is to facilitate the learning so that the learners do not face the difficulty in understanding that particular concept that particular things for which the counseling is conducted so can i add something to my experience like you see i have also worked as an academic counselor for igloo when i joined in the regional center and i felt that we are doing so much of orientation program for the counselor so let me also take some sessions and actually demonstrate to them that how effective a counseling session can be so i took up there's a foundation course in humanities and social sciences where there is a very large enrollment because it's a compulsory course for the undergraduate level so the learners who came were a mixed group totally heterogeneous some were complete were total dropouts from the convention system they never got admission so they were a younger age group then there were people who are very i mean elderly who had not gone to college for their own personal socioeconomic reasons and now they want to get back to their studies and they were working people but who wanted to improve their career prospects so there was a and there were another category were housewives who to improve their social mobility or you know to come up in society they were wanting to pre-graduates so they were all and there were some very old people it was their life dream to become a graduate and then you know retire people so we had you can say practically all age groups of people were in this program i mean this particular course whom i had to handle so when i met them so the first session as i said is very important the ice breaking session and in that session i did not even i mean my basic purpose of that ice breaking was to build the confidence of the learner and me i mean they should look up to me as a counselor so i tried to extract as much information about each and every individual learner that was my job so what i did was i conducted a snowballing session now in that snowballing session i divided the there were around 45 participants i remember 45 46 i mean the successions after that became even more because when they see that the counselor is you know there is some activity going on definitely people will by word of mouth it spreads and people come for the next session so in the first session they were on 45 46 people so i divided them into pairs and then i asked each pair i gave them a specific task i said i want i give you five minutes and each pair has to tell i mean about you know firstly because i wanted to find out the background and the motivation of the learner because that's very important to understand the learners so i i made them find out very specific questions that what was the educational background with what purpose they have taken this program very simple questions and if they have any major achievements to their credit you know in many field so in this way i and then the pairs exchanged the information with the other pair and then i made it an open house and i asked like a has to inform the whole group about b and b will inform about a because you know it's easier for another for the for another person to blow the trumpet for you nobody likes to blow their own trumpet so in this way i think within half an hour we all got to know each other very well i mean that whole ice breaking session was so successful then then i told them what is the role of this purpose of this counseling sessions and how they should come believe me in the first session the attendance group because you know then people realize that something special happens here so they came in the next session and in the next session when they came i realized that although i had given them a task i said everybody must bring their course material this particular block i should see everybody has brought that block and you should have read that block and come and as you have pointed out this was my experience also nobody went through the material i mean hardly one or two and most of them because they thought that you know we are paying for this this face to face session is there so why should we read we will be you know spoon fed you know that is the psychology of the learners so when they came so i asked them and they were very frank about it many of them said we thought madam when we come here you will only give us some inputs and that you know we keep us on track i said see i have come here to help you to facilitate your learning and how will you learn unless you open the materials yes you know you have to interact with this material and unless you do that you will never learn anything and this material is not for decoration to be kept on your shelves at home yes so what i did was i made them open i what i did i do again divided them into six groups because everybody is you know all the learners because seeing the background i knew what kind of background all of them have and some of them are bold enough to speak most of them lacked confidence because you see as i told you the kind of background of the learners so when i divided them into groups i only made the groups and i saw to it that one confident person was there as a group leader because people are very reticent to you know express themselves in a big forum like this because they've never been exposed and as it is some of them are quite under confident and as professor biswas said there are some people who don't even have any study skills left because they come back to education after several years after the gap and so what we did was then i gave them a task a specific task i picked on one unit each group was given one unit now in that block i think there were six or seven units or maybe five or six units now i don't remember but the task i assigned was each group was given one unit to make a concept map of the unit so what happened all the members who they had anyway brought all the materials that was sure they brought so it was very easy they all opened that particular unit and they were forced to go through the contents and then at the end of the i mean at the end of half because you see we have more than two hours at our disposal how to make use of that is not you know people as you said many of them don't ask any questions they do not know they have not read what will they ask so in this way we gave them 45 minutes to go through the each group went through one unit and then after that we had group presentations naturally the boldest person i had made him a group leader and then the group leader made a presentation of so what happened all the groups became familiar with the entire course material 80 pages was reduced to just 18 minutes you can say in 18 minutes everybody knew what this whole block can do so like this when i made the students aware that you see you can you have to interact with the material only then you will be able to answer your assignments they understood the value and then they look forward to what would be the next activity madam in the next session so the point in in brief professor manjulika what you have narrated each and what we have been discussing is that the counsellor is expected to think of innovative ways of engaging the learner so that the job of the counsellor to decide that you cannot always suggest that you cannot always through a manual or guidebook give to the counsellors as a teacher with experience and seeing the learners and understanding the system it becomes essential for the counsellors to understand its role and how to make the counselling session more interactive so that the learners take interest in attending the session so finally the bishas it just very briefly it just given advice to the counsellors so that the counselling can be made very effective just very briefly yeah whatever points i have told i am not going to repeat it what the counsellors must do in the counselling sessions now i can with that i can add something what counsellors should not do because you talked about that the students they are sometimes they are hesitant to ask the questions because they when they come to the counselling sessions they bring their background because in the school years maybe they have not asked a single questions or they may not be allowed to ask the questions and i think this is a right what i am telling because i have conducted a number of workshops with the students in northeast regions all the eight states and i have seen the students told me after the workshop before the workshop also that we have never interacted with the teacher teacher never allowed us to ask questions just they came to the class and they have given lecture and one break so that is the situation even a 36 years old lady told me this is the first time i am interacting with the teacher and with the uh with the microphone so that was the situation so then what i uh suggest is that they should remove the barriers of good communication because if you want to communicate with the learners in the counselling sessions that which is must you have to remove the barriers what are the barriers the counsellors will have to think about they should come with a positive attitude they should not show any negative attitude they should be a active listeners as i told active listener they should listen they should motivate the learners to ask again and again and if they're poor listeners then definitely the students will not uh the students will think the teacher is not listening to me why i why i ask the questions so that is very important and they should allow the students to ask the questions again and again if you ask now one interesting uh technique is there you ask the students a question the answer with the questions uh the answer is known to the students you know that students can answer that questions did that questions you ask uh the student very first sessions few sessions don't ask any questions which the students cannot answer exactly because the students cannot answer very first time they will not ask any questions that is the thing so yeah so you mean to say that the easy question is the part that they will have more confidence in answering the question. Yes, you should know that that answer the students would be able to give. That question only you ask. Then they will be motivated and they will say okay. And then you say the very good, very good you say. They give reinforcement. So next time they will ask the questions. There are techniques. This is one technique I am talking about. So students will feel safe and respected also. The teacher is giving me a very good response. And one thing I will say that the counsellors sometimes I have observed that they dwell on their own difficulties sometimes. All the counsellors are not perfect. They dwell on their own difficulties. That should not be the, that they should not do that. Actually if there are some difficulties, maybe environmental difficulties, infrastructure, whatever it may be, they should try to manage that. They should not show through their behaviour that I am facing the difficulties. They should behave like that. Everything is very comfortable situations. And they should not neglect the students' concern. The students have some concerns. Sometimes the counsellors think that no, this is not my, I will discuss this. This is not my, you go to the university and ask the administration and this and that. Sometimes they bypass. That attitude should not be there. All the time they should give attention to the students' concern. Otherwise the students will get job. So you know if it happens again and again they will get job. And they should not avoid the students any areas, actually the painful areas I am talking about. Say for example you are talking about the evolution of assignments also. So the assignments marks is not good or sometimes may be seen that he has approached somebody but he has not got the actual answers. So maybe he has been suffering from some psychological problems also. That kind of thing should not be avoided. This should be tackled in a very friendly manner. That should be the approach. What one can do is, I mean the program coordinator can also devise some guidelines for the counsellors regarding the treatment of the subject. How it should be meted out in the counselling sessions. And that is what we did. That is done by our university also. Yes, in fact that is what I did. I was coordinating a course in Ignu when I was in Stride. So for my particular course I devised a whole mechanism that so many blocks, what kind of treatment has to be met out to certain areas. Like what techniques can be used. So what I did in a workshop in YCMOU. Now the YCMOU has made a manual, subject specific manual for each and every counsellor based on this workshop. And they have translated this idea into reality. They have even, it's just not a general counselling manual. It's a manual for each and every course. They tell them that how to, what techniques can be used. Because see in a course you can identify which are the hard spots. Yes. Which are the important areas that need to be covered. And ours is an examination oriented system. We should not forget that. I mean we do depend a lot on examinations for evaluating the performance of a learner. So definitely learners are also looking at everything from that examination point of view also. And also from the learning point of view. So such kind of manual has been prepared based on my ideas. I think it's a very good idea. And definitely our university can make this. So this one workshop in YCMOU resulted in this manual and they are very happy now with this approach. Because it's not a, it's not, there is no blanket solution. But then each subject expert can identify the important portions of the course and guide the counsellor that what method will be best suited to make the activity more interesting and inculcate learning. Yes. And learning, good learning environment for the learners. You know, presuming that learners have read or not read. But we ensure that the learners learn something in the counsellor. To this method. So thank you very much all this professors from IGNU and also Director of Distance Education Council. So we are very grateful to all of you for sharing your views, particularly advices given to the counsellors to make the counselling effective. So with these words, thank you all of you. Thank you.