 and other practitioners in the ODL system. We are very happy that Professor Bheed Bhienkaya, the Vaisyanswara Krishna University Enterprise, is here with us. Namaskar. Actually, Professor Bhienkaya spent about 30 years of his career in open and distance learning education, particularly in the university in Hyderabad, the Ambedkar Open University. And currently, he is the Vaisyanswara Indom Krishna University Enterprise. And besides that, he is an expert in ODL and also a management guru. So, we welcome you to this studio, sir. Thank you, sir. Thank you. We take advantage of your visit to this university because you have been visiting twice in the month of April as well as this month as an external verifier, of commentative learning for the cold rim practice doing by this university. And we take advantage of your presence in the university and we thought that it is better to have some interaction with the ODL system as well, particularly, more particularly on open educational resources. Basically, what I see that this, what is the basic philosophy of ODL? Particularly, we have sometimes some confusion among the learners of this university as well as counsellors. They might need to have some clarification on the very philosophy of ODL. You are quite aware being the leader of open distance learning in this path of the country, serving the cause of higher education through recent modes, sir. And well, open distance learning is a philosophy essentially meant for democratizing higher education. Yes. It is education for the people, of the people and by the people like to define democracy. Yes. You know, in countries like India, developing countries of like India, the demand for higher education is more whereas the conventional universities are not able to meet the demand. Exactly. And hence we are not able to provide higher education to the needy who aspire to improve their qualifications academically. Our grass and rollment ratio today in the country is 18.8 which is less than the world average. Yes. And in developed countries it is of the order of 40, 45%, 50% also in some countries. Whereas in our country it is 18.8 and we are aiming to increase it to 30%. By the end of 2020. 2020. And by 2017 we wanted to increase it to 25%. This is the target. In fact, distance education is a great opportunity to the seekers of higher education, particularly those who are underserved. Yes. Underprivileged. Four segments of the population. Rural people. Yes. People residing in hilly areas, tribal areas, etc. because they do not have access as they are not financially sound to meet the expenditure incidental to higher education system in the conventional mode. Basically, that's one of the very important contribution of the ODL as I understand that the low cost education and it is giving access to almost all section of the society. Yes. You see, the philosophy is to say in a few words education for all. Yes. Education for all. In the sense that those who cannot afford conventional education can seek education through distance mode because the cost of distance education graduate. That is to produce a graduate through distance education mode it costs only one third of the conventional mode of education. Yes. And for example, we are charging in India in different open universities for a bachelor's program annual fee ranges between 1000 to 1500. Yes. That it means in about 5000 rupees a person is able to get the graduation degree and we are providing tuition, we are providing this print material, self-learning materials, we are providing all the learners support required and that is the benefit of open distance education. Yes. It is to reach the unreached and to shift education from classes to masses and to de-alitize higher education. Yes. And moreover, it is an opportunity. There is no barrier with regard to age. There is no compulsion that they should attend the tutorials or our counseling sessions. Yes. And hence the system is a flexible open admission policy. Formal education is not required. Yes. In a conventional institution, if a student wants to join bachelor's degree he has to pass plus two level or intermediate course. But here in open education system we provide a bridge course for the bachelor's program for one year or six months in your university. Yes. In Assam, in KK Hyundai it is one year. Okay. It is six months. Yes. And in some universities it is not there also. They conduct an entrance test and based on the qualification obtained in the entrance test admissions are given. It means those who fail seventh class, eighth class, tenth class, intermediate class, they have an opportunity to pursue their higher education, bachelor's degree and PG education. It is a great opportunity. This is how the philosophy is to serve the needy. Exactly. Education at an affordable cost. Yes. To reach the unreached and the poorest of the poor in terms of providing education. To create an opportunity to inservice people to continue their education. Even housewives. While doing the job. Housewives. And everybody, even construction workers are there. Yes. Workers related to different spheres of life. They are our students. No, in our university for example this year one gentleman of the seven years old has taken admission in the first year's first semester. So this is a great opportunity for such a person to lifelong learning. In a way it is realizing the self potential. Exactly. It is the dream of an individual, a person who retired about 15, 17 years ago, wants to do a bachelor's program or PG program. Yes. It's an engaging, it is engaging himself in a fruitful activity of knowledge gain of spending his time productively. Yes. Second another point that in the OBL philosophy we talk about 3A. It's education for anyone. Anywhere. And anytime. Anytime. So in this case, in this to give support to this 3A I think the information and communication technology is a must. Yeah. So what do you think about that? No, no, ICT has total revolutionized the teaching learning process. Exactly, exactly. The total transformation that has come about in the education front. If we analyze the kind of trends that have taken place in the past one and a half decades in the higher education sector, phenomenal. See for example, now we talk about virtual library, virtual convocation, virtual conference, virtual classroom. These are the concepts that we are talking about. It means that technology is able to provide education to farthest places. Students need not come to the institution and it is what is called distributed learning. Yes. That we can we can telecast our lessons through satellite, telecast our lessons through those ocean channel and also we can provide stand alone audio, CDs and DVDs and in addition to print materials we can use electronic media and realize the potential of electronic media in taking education to the learners. For example, KK Handik State of Open University having the community radio is an example of how it is serving. Not only that, the lessons, radio lessons broadcast through community radio are streamed on internet. It is a great opportunity. That is, it is not only for the learners of this university that also the general public can have an access and it is a social cause that we are serving. I believe even from your university the learner can have the community radio through internet. It is possible. Not only here, all over the world through internet the programs of this university can be heard by anybody in the world. In fact, that is an example of open education resource. Again, I tell you, we have the headquarters in Gohapi. We have study centers about 260 study centers spread all over Assam. What we can do with the age of technology of course we have to make more infrastructure that centrally we can give lectures on certain topics in the headquarters and that can be telecast maybe offline or online. We can send you to the study centers and all the learners will be benefited from the section given by the experts in the centrally. Yeah, the video lessons we call it produced in this studio can be developed into DVDs and standalone DVDs can be given to study centers where students can watch them at their convenience. Exactly. And we can give a DVD to students these days DVDs are not expensive. We can also give 4-5 lessons of a particular academic program can be given in the form of a DVD. Students can watch the programs and learn the course when they want to do. It's convenience to them. Not only our students when we are giving to the study center coordinator the students of that college, regular students also can get the benefit of it. That is the great potential that not only the experts available locally or nationally even the international experts when they visit our university we can record the lesson and their views on a particular subject area and that can be given. It means the experts available all over the world in a particular branch of knowledge can be made available to different groups of students. Yes, another reason development in the audio system you might be because you might be knowing and you are very much involved in the whole system that whatever the study material we prepare normally the system was 5 years back it is my own property it is your own property. Now it has been globalized the educational resources have been globalized now the concept of open educational resources so can you just give more detail about that to the my learners and the... Just now we talked about ICT ICT revolutionized the teaching learning process revolutionized the administrative system revolutionized the student evaluation system and it has touched upon every area teaching learning evaluation administration research this is how ICT had an impact and it will have amazing impact in the years ahead. Now open education resources is one of the benefit of the ICT being available to us as teachers. What do we mean by these open education resources? To have the genesis of open education resources it is about 20 years old a concept that we have been availing open education resources but the momentum came from 2002 only the last few years. Yeah last one decade in 2002 UNESCO organized the conference where they adopted the concept of open educational resources what do we mean by that that the institutions shall be in a position to give copyright to anybody to use the material for teaching research and any other purpose other than commercial use. This is the concept of open education resources. It means open education resources can be accessed used customized, translated and localized by anyone anyone let him be a teacher, a researcher a student, a person from the general public. But can anyone copy exactly line by line from particular particular area of work? Yes it is like this. There is no such bar. No no there is no such bar at all unless it is put to commercial use there is no bar. It is for academic purpose. It is for knowledge generation it is for knowledge dissemination it is for the benefit of everybody. The philosophy here is knowledge is the common wealth of human kind it must be made available to all the human beings So the benefit goes to everyone. Now for example I will give a couple of practices there is one Asia E University Asia Electronic University located in Malaysia The university does not produce any materials all their programs are based on open educational resources they are digital learning resources used for e-learning purpose by the university and they define the curriculum and for that curriculum they search from the web the open education resources which are copy left open education resources are copy left not copy right the copy is left out to be used by anybody So Asia E University is taking materials available from the web under open education resources and giving the materials to the students and testing them they define the curriculum develop the curriculum syllabus and then the materials are identified and borrowed and supplied So the relevant materials have been collected relevant materials are collected and from OER and other sources and then where they are freely available and they are given to the students and they are offering the e-learning courses it is called that is why Afflate we are hearing OER based e-learning OER based e-learning programs that is how the new concept similarly in Atabaskar University, Canada there was a directive from the university that if quality open education resources are available in a particular branch of knowledge in a particular program or course such materials need not be developed and then other materials which are not available in the OER front may be developed however quality will be controlled by the university Recently Professor Benkaya that our university has got a license from Creative Commons that is also some form of open education resources so actually we can adopt their resources our resources can be adopted by others so that is a great advantage not only for us but for the other open distance learning education system also. Here any country has its own option of getting licensed to see that their materials are good but at world level the famous licensing framework is Creative Commons I am sure that this university under your leadership has taken membership in Creative Commons it's a great cause that you are joining the movement of open education resources and helping the society getting ourselves benefited now in 2012 UNESCO organized that world OER meetings congress so I think that can you enlighten us about this it is like this in June 2002 the first initiative was made by UNESCO as a decennial event they organized world OER congress at UNESCO world OER congress was held at UNESCO there they adopted some policies after thorough deliberations and then some policies were some promotional measures were given to government teachers and the government institutions and individual teachers it means that UNESCO has identified at the congress that there is a need for the government institutions and individuals to play a greater role in the movement of open education resources these policies include promotion of they have given 8 recommendations to each of these 3 groups that is government governments across the countries governments and the institutions higher education institutions and the third one is teachers working in different educational institutions and moreover here promotion of generally the common policy measures they suggested to promote OER or promotion of OER as a policy at every level digitizing the learning resources adopting OER as a policy funding development and creation of open education resources and leaving the copyright by the individuals on the research works they have done and institutions encouraged in professional development among the teachers towards developing skills of OER these are important promotional measures that UNESCO congress organized given to governments and then and also governments were advised to reduce the gap of digital divide and enhance the bandwidth to make digital learning resources available and to fund creation and development of OER in a big way. In fact we are also contributing to at least to a little extent to the development of OER in the sense that whatever the material we have that printing material we have digitalized it and whatever the audio visual material we have it we have put in the UTIP so this is linked from the website of the university so we have a university home that open access resource that link and anyone anybody any learner any counselor they go to the website of the university and they get the link to get our study materials both in the electronic form as well as in audio visual format so this actually it is not a great thing we are doing but we are just initiating process of I would say in India you are doing really a great job because with seven years old experience you are able to create internet radio and then introduce so YouTube and loading the videos there and I know that I think I visited your YouTube also and then watch some of the programs recorded by you earlier also on the same kind of topics and there are 79 videos already available on the YouTube of this university it is not a small job it is not a small job it is a great service similarly audios about 200 audio CDs are there and then they are all wonderful services they are all wonderful services that the university is rendering to the not only to the learners but also beyond the beyond the learning groups any public can use it so another clarification I just want to know it because many people many counselors to then have some confusion regarding OER and OA open education resources and open access maybe I would like to drop on this number one open education resources as a movement has taken place in the past one decade Hewlett & Flora William & Flora Hewlett Foundation gave lot of funding to MIT and MIT used that fund to develop open education resources under the project open course where and all the programs on offer on campus in MIT the OER have been developed and they are available under open courseware project similarly with UNESCO initiative Commonwealth of Learning initiative and then MIT initiative UK OER initiative there is a lot of movement that has come about even in India we are developing open education resources and MIT is there and several other institutions like KK Hondick state or in their own modest way contributing the material IGNOW has contributed this is how the movement has come about so normally this is the purpose is the materials developed through funding have been made available till now now in the recent past we have been seeing institution spending and making the materials learning materials knowledge resources available in the public domain for free use that is OER open access is also more than a decade old in 2001 at Budapest there was a conference held and Budapest initiative it is called Budapest open access initiative was the concept BO AI it is called in 2002 they this open access refers to open access to the scientific information which is based on research results the purpose here is science journals are very expensive science information is not available and hence there was an initiative that the public funded scientific research or any other research for that matter which is carried out with the public funds must be made available freely to the public that is open access open access refers to open access of the research results supported essentially by the public funds that is open access you see several journals are available on open access policy today it is initiative by the Budapest no one thing that purpose of bankaya so teachers have a great role to play in the ODL system as well as in the conventional system also now what can be the contribution made by the teachers basically teachers counselors towards the development or use of the OER and also how can the student directly get benefit see as ODL teachers as ODL teachers we have a greater role number one is first we must be creators of OER we must be researchers on OER we must give copyright of our materials which we did research on our own without any even funding and we must be able to bring awareness among the public and particularly our counselors and learners about the availability of great resources called open educational resources means that a teacher can do research can develop material can give the copyright can organize training programs for the benefit of everybody to bring about awareness among the counselors and learners particularly and any other person for that matter counselors and learners shall make use of this wonderful resource how we must be able to train our counselors and let them know that these are the wonderful resources knowledge resources amazing wealth today we have on the net and this wealth of knowledge is available free of cost so counselors must be informed of this generally conventional institutions teachers do not know that there are resources like that not many of them know and some of them might know but several of them do not know so there is a need to bring awareness among the counselors first who are teaching our courses for example close to 3000 counselors are working in this university all of them must be informed about the availability of the open access and open education resources for the benefit of the learners they must in turn inform the learners that in their subject area so in so links available and if you go to MIT website you have otherwise you can go to open course where project directly there are materials available and if you go to NPTEL there are materials available this kind of information is to be given to the students and the students must be able to make use of these resources not only that as university through our newsletters through our video lessons through our community radio we must be able to let our students know that there are sources of knowledge available in different subject area you take any subject there are materials available you take education there are, pharmacy there are computer science there are many management there are and even English and humanities and other subjects social sciences regardless of the type of program the materials are available you have to choose from the web that is the thing Yes sir being an expert in the audio system working for about 30 years in Hyderabad the Crombacker University I just want to request you to just give some advice to the learners and the counselors of this university through this audio visual program that what should be the basic responsibilities of the counselors and because sometimes it happens that the learners think that they need not go to the study centers even on the weekly counseling day and sometimes the learners sometimes find that the study centers may not be they are working properly and in that case it may be disincentive to them so in this case what can be done by the study centers counselors study center insurers then coordinators and also what will be a suggestion to the learners okay now I keep reiterating this statement that in open universities and distance education institutions every person working in the university at the headquarter at the study center at regional center every person is a public relations person exactly in the sense that he must have empathy towards students yes he must be courteous he must be encouraging he must be patting these are the or she must be he or she now even a clerical level person who is working in the study centers or in the university he must have the same type of philosophy very very important they must have they must internalize distance education system as a philosophy as a value and they have a greater role for example now study center work is as much important as the coordinator exactly because some information he can give so first important thing is study center head that is coordinator counselors and university at quarter staff all of them must know the academic regulations examination system regulations general information about the admission process examination processes etc total and complete knowledge of the academic and other regulations is the first essential factor first essential thing that they should have that is one so knowledge of the university system university regulations university processes etc and academic programs on offer this is the first thing second thing is they must be cordial and kind enough to understand the problems of the students yes as counselors I keep on saying there is famous theory called roger's wage theory this wage refers to w a g e each word standing for a particular purpose particular meaning w stands for warmth a for acceptance g for genuineness and e for empathy it means every counselor four qualities must be there these are the important qualities or traits required for a open distance teacher let it be university at quarter teacher or the counselor at the study center or coordinator whenever a student comes we must welcome warmly we must be warm enough to to engage the student to give the information and accept next important thing is that they must accept accepting the students they should not feel that the students are wasting my time or I am busy kind of no that is not the approach they must accept third is they must be genuine if a student comes for some career guidance some placement service or some general information some personal difficulty genuine advice is important genuineness and all the more important is the fourth quality empathy is the counselor must be in a position to place himself in the place of the student in the place of the learner if I am in his place or if I am in her place what should I be feeling what should I be feeling this kind of empathizing quality then they can do wonderful job as counselors and learners can be motivated learners need to be motivated because that is not our learners are not homogeneous they are heterogeneous group in terms of diverse backgrounds economic, social and also educational background and age wise demographic feature is that age composition and hence they need diverse need support no yesterday you know discussion regarding UK Open University that the role of the counselors and the teachers he told me that the teachers wait for the telephonic conversation with the learners for about 2 hours they are available so this system in UK Open University there is what is called tele-tutorial system every teacher is asked to be made make himself available ask to make himself available at a given time and there is a telephone call coming from the student and there was about 20-25 students would be allotted to each teacher and that particular topic will be given the students will call and where the teacher will concept it means that the teacher is available during that slot of time to meet the requirements of the students to clarify the doubts that kind of system is there that kind of system but here it may sound to be very expensive a proportion at this stage what we have done this year in this year prospect as the telephonic expenses the charges towards telephones went down now we can think of that also we can think of that also what we are doing this year in the prospectus we have given the email idea of all the 35 faculty members and saying that the learners can contact the faculty members through internet and I have instructed the faculty members that within 48 hours whatever the question asked by the learners through internet must be answered academic questions so this is a system we are introducing although it is not just like UK open university system but it is a payasatam like the learners the counselors as well as the teachers available to the service of the learners in a way this is a better proposition than even telly tutorials telly tutorials there is a time slot given and students are hard to call but now students can send in anytime they want and in less than 48 hours the response goes this is more an advantageous kind of system you have initiated the only thing is that from the learners side they must use the internet and these cafes are available no no see the students may not be having everybody may not be having it may be having internet and laptop at home but I think every place is having a cyber cafe they can do it at least 75% of the students at this stage will be able to take advantage of this now more about for each of the blocks each of the blocks of Assam there is a free internet service given by the state government so the students can go to the block office and use the internet service so that is a great opportunity no if there is a will there is a way students can definitely make use of it and whenever we introduce some new technology we think students may not be able to cope with it our experience is if we introduce they are the better users and they adapt themselves to the requirements for example the ICL technology is used originally when we introduced any university we were thinking will they be able to do it but now they are wonderfully using it they know how to use the technology and we are able to give a better service to the students so finally I am taking a lot of time for your very busy schedule in the university so basically this time we have come to the university as an external verifier for the common learning cold rim that review and information that improvement model now can you just enlighten because we know this that can you enlighten the learners and the counselors regarding the cold rim and what is the advantages of cold rim how the university will get the advantage to improve the quality of education can you just enlighten cold rim is a quality assessment manual and process common wealth of cold rim refers to common wealth of learning review and improvement model and they have introduced this model about two years ago and very few institutions got quality mark and quality verified by the cold rim and common wealth of learning is helping the open education institutions to enable themselves to make an assessment of their own performance in terms of the quality education that they are able to provide and there is a procedure the manual describes the step by step process comprising about seven steps and I congratulate the Vice Chancellor of Krishna Khan Thandik State Open University for voluntarily inviting this in the first stage itself in the first instance to accept the quality assessment by the cold and cold has sent me as an external expert and I have been helping the university for the past six months and in March I came once and now I came and my understanding is that in a span of seven years of experience the university is doing a very good job that they are very strong in many friends and there are certain limitations because of the age of the university because of the resources constraint but they will be overcome as we progress in the direction of the development and this is a public funded university which will definitely develop in multi-dimensional way and the quality is very good as of now considering the experience and the quality is said to be high particularly in the teaching learning front use of multi, I mean development of multimedia at their quarters and making it available through internet and all that YouTube and these kinds of measures are there but infrastructure side there is a need but anyway because of the small age it will take some time but otherwise university is doing wonderful job by greetings and congratulations to the university and particularly I congratulate Vice Chancellor for initiating cold room exercise at this stage even in India not more than four universities have been done so far. So actually we are coming to the close of this discussion so what on behalf of the university I thank you not only for being with us for the two times but for guiding this university to improve the quality of ODEL education and this will definitely greatly help this university to march ahead with the great universities open universities of the country as well as the global open universities so thank you very much Professor it is my pleasure I feel very homely here and then I am really enjoying my stay and the hospitality and fraternity and friendship of the Vice Chancellor and senior officers and young and vibrant faculty of this university and non-teaching staff I am grateful to you for this opportunity Thank you very much