 Thank you very much sir. Okay, long greetings from KK Handic State Open University. Good morning to all. Convener of the 16th Foundation Day Celebration Committee of KKHSU take immense pleasure in welcoming all our esteemed participants to the 16th Foundation Day lecture of KK Handic State Open University. I'm glad to state that we are indeed very honored to have enormous Dr. Sanjay Mishra education specialist e-learning at Commonwealth of Learning Canada as a speaker for today's lecture. And he shall deliver the 16th Foundation Day lecture of KK Handic State Open University on the topic, supporting learners in distance and online learning lessons for educators. I would like to take this opportunity to extend the hearty welcome to Dr. Sanjay Mishra who has joined us from Vancouver Canada. Good evening and welcome to our university. I now request the chairperson of the 16th Foundation Day Celebration Committee of KK Handic State Open University to say a few words on the occasion chairperson sir. Honorable Vice Chancellor, Professor Sanjay Mishra, the education specialist e-learning Commonwealth of Learning Vancouver Canada and speaker of today's Foundation Day lecture. As we all know, the ODEAL and for that matter the online system have regularly emerged as a strong entity in the field of teaching learning process. Like any other system of teaching and learning, the learner here in the ODEAL and online system is the main focus. However, we have observed that in spite of such a focus, the learner at many points of the teaching learning process as it suffers an identity crisis. At times, once admitted, the learner becomes a forgotten identity. It is as if the learner is a persona non grata in the system. He or she, the learner is at many times alienated from the system. In view of that, how to provide support back up to the learner is a major challenge to the policy planners, to the policy practitioners, as well as to all the stakeholders of the ODEAL and the online system. It is in this context that the subject matter of today's Foundation Day lecture has been formulated. We are all eagerly waiting for the lecture to be provided by Professor Mishra and we hope we all will be enlightened through his valuable input. So thank you, sir. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, sir, for your valuable insights. Now I request our Honorable Vice Chancellor, I.C. Sir, Professor Anand Sharma, sir, to kindly deliver his inaugural address. Sir. Thank you, Dr. Abhijit Mian, respected registrar, assumed colleagues in the university and distinguished speaker for this. I think this is all got disconnected. We'll wait. We'll wait. It's okay now, sir. Voice to Hane, sir. Sir, mute, sir. All now? Yes, sir. Okay. Thank you. Commander of Learning, he has been invited to deliver a lecture, the Foundation Day lecture on this, our ODEAL system, how to support the, our learners in distance and online education and some lessons for the educators. We, the distance educators, have to invite some new learning in the current day context. The kind of learning that we used to have before pandemic and the kind of learning that we are supposed to acquire in the new environment, there's lots of senses, we have to assume a new role. So we need to definitely take some new lessons as because he is looking after the e-learning platform, so definitely we are going to benefit from his lecture. Definitely we are going to get certain tips. What would like that Dr. Sanjavish if he could contextualize in our context, like because we are having the issues of digital divide, most of the learners prefer online book examination, open book examination online. They want submission of assignments in the portal like those, but the issues of digital divide remain. At the same time, the profile of learners, also we are having with some ageing learners who may not be that digitally that conversant with their new age gadgets. At the same time, there are certain issues like hidden costs, latent costs, switching costs because of the rental costs of the, you know, the different rental services, the digital service providers, a number of issues are there, the implementation related issues are there, but at the same time we need to respond to the call of the day. So definitely this lecture is going to give us certain useful lessons, so I will not prolong my lecture with these few words. I wish that this 16th Foundation Day lecture will be ID very special for all of us and I request Dr. Sanjavish for the lecture. Thank you very much. Thank you so much to the Honorable Vice Chancellor Sir of the University. Good morning to everyone and good evening to all of the occasion, Dr. Sanjay Mishra Sir. It is a pleasure for me to introduce our speaker today for the 16th Foundation Day lecture of Krishna Kanta Hondikoi State Open University, Dr. Sanjay Mishra. Dr. Sanjay Mishra is an education specialist e-learning at Commonwealth of Learning Canada. Prior to that, Dr. Mishra served Commonwealth of Learning as the director of the Commonwealth Educational Media Center for Asia, SEMCA. He is one of the leading scholars in open distance and online learning. Previously, he also served as the program specialist ICT in Education, Science and Culture at UNESCO Paris. Dr. Mishra has over 25 years of experience in design, development and management of open and distance learning programs. During his service in different capacities at UNESCO, amongst many innovative activities and programs, he developed the OER-based one-year postgraduate diploma in e-learning. The recipient of ISTD Vivekananda National Award for Excellence in Human Resource Development and Training in 2007. He also facilitated over 1,000 hours of training in distance education, information and communication technologies, educational multimedia, e-learning and OER in over 30 countries. He is also the recipient of the Indian Literary Leaders 2012 award, among other significant awards that has been conferred to him over time. He has contributed over 200 publications as books, chapters, journal papers, conference presentations, book reviews and distance learning materials. And the university is honored and pleased to have you, sir, today amidst us to deliver this 16th Foundation Day lecture. And now I hand over the session to you to deliver the lecture. Thank you, sir. Thank you very much for that introduction. I esteem Professor Nriven Narayan Sharma, Honorable Vice Chancellor, Professor Arupjuti Choudhary, Registrar of Krishnakandthi Handiki State Open University, Dr. Avijit Goyan, Convener of the 16th Foundation Day Celebration Committee, and distinguished participants. I am thankful to the organizers for the invitation to deliver the Foundation Day lecture today. As a young university, Foundation Day is a reminder to all stakeholders about its mission and vision to provide, quote, education beyond barriers, unquote. Named after the illustrious son of the soil and one of the great Indology scholars, the KK Handiki State Open University is an inspiration and beacon of light for the people of the Northeast. I had the privilege to visit the university and have interacted with several faculty members and staff in the past. And therefore, I have the first hand information about your passion and commitment to spread quality higher education. Today, my topic is related to student support, and I have entitled it as supporting learners in distance and online learning, lessons for the educators. My plan is to provide the context in which distance and online learning is delivered today, emphasize the importance of designing suitable learner support mechanisms and how to monitor student support to provide quality services. I will end the lessons that open and distance learning systems could provide to conventional higher education and remind all of us in the field of open and distance learning to rethink our learner support practice. This comes out of my conviction that distance and online learning can significantly improve learning outcomes. However, I want to make a disclaimer. Because of the generic nature of the topic that I am going to talk about and its importance, it may be important for you to contextualize in your own situation and think about practical ways of providing learner support at the time of crisis that we have been facing. Nevertheless, the field of learner support and particularly what the principles of open and distance learning has huge amount of experiences that can sufficiently guide us to tide over the crisis and provide quality education and learner support services to our students. Let me start with the context. What are the key issues? First, higher education is important for innovation and economic development. Most developed countries have high gross enrollment ratio in higher education. In the national education policy 2020, the target has been set as 50 percent gross enrollment ratio by 2035, which means in about 15 years, India wants to almost double the gross enrollment ratio from the current state of 27.1 percent. So what would be our growth rate per year? On average, if our growth rate would be about 5 percent and we may be able to achieve this humongous task. That means almost 50 universities and 2000 colleges need to be added every year keeping the population constant. Currently, India is one of the largest higher education systems in the world with over 56,000 institutions. In comparison, United States has less than 5000 degree granting institutions. In terms of the number of students, it is the second largest system up to China. The number of students in higher education in India is almost like that of the total population of Canada. The cost of higher education in India is very high and that is why the open and distance learning system is so significantly important. An estimate by the Economist Intelligence Unit shows that a four-year degree cost about 500 percent of average income. A Government of India study in 2014 showed that students in India spend over $49.7 million on textbooks and supplies per year. Quality of education or particularly quality of higher education is a major concern. Low employability of graduates, poor quality of teaching, weakness in the governance system, insufficient funding and complex regulatory norms continue to plague the sector. At the same time, there is craze for international ranking without going into the core of the challenges the higher education systems face. It is important to realize that ranking is a business and they compare apples and oranges. They do not reflect the true practice or the true picture of the quality of education in the country. The ranking of institutions to promote quality had several issues such as rural urban bias in the system, availability of best teachers and students in a particular group of institutions, our funding support for research and innovations etc. The ranking system also creates categories among institutions and in future would lead to more disparity in academic credentials. Quality is actually a continuous process and a product of input and processes that happen within the educational institution. It is in this context that learner support needs to be seen in not just in open and distance learning institution but all types of educational enterprises. India adopted the national education policy in 2020 that is very forward looking and focuses on use of technology for teaching and learning to improve quality. While open universities do not find a place in the policy, it puts a lot of emphasis on multimodal and multidisciplinary higher education. The policy has several strong recommendations for online and blended learning including the focus on the issue of digital divide and equity in access to technology. These are the some of the points Honourable Vice Chancellor and Honourable Registers are also a mention in their introductory remarks. The total number of internet users in India is at 45% of the population while the world average is about 59%. Household with internet access at home is 65% worldwide whereas in India it is only about 24%. Mobile subscription is much more at higher level at 84%. But what about the bandwidth? Internet bandwidth has several bottlenecks before it actually reaches the consumer or the learner. However, the fixed bandwidth available to Indians on average is comparable with global bandwidth available. Mobile data speed is however almost half of the world average. So, while more people have access to mobile and smartphones, the bandwidth they get is not enough probably for teaching and learning. A recent study at the University of Hyderabad corroborated this assessment. 40% students indicated unreliable connectivity, 30% said they were worried about cost of data and 18% indicated they can't access online courses at all. The COVID-19 has put the students to huge mental health challenges. A European Union study indicates students had to face heavy workload during this COVID-19 situation. 50% felt their performance had declined. There was iniquity access to tools and internet like in India and students faced psychological and emotional well-being issues. Several Indian studies during the COVID-19 also indicated challenges for students in higher education. One study reported 68.7% students having mild anxiety and 61% having mild depression. While another study reported 28% had moderate to severe depression and 51.5% had mild to severe anxiety levels. So, the key question for us is how to provide inclusive education for all that is based on the principles of equity, quality and empathy. I believe open and distance learning can offer so much to the world of education to learn from. And this is my premise today for this presentation. Designing learner support is a deliberate practice. Either we do it or we don't. Most of the time it is missing in the conventional higher education but not in the open and distance learning system. First, we must understand distance and online learning. What we are witnessing during the current pandemic is not online learning. This is emergency remote teaching and I am afraid much of these experiences are now being attributed to online learning without appropriate evaluation and only based on anecdotal experiences. Online learning is a planned and deliberate approach to use network technologies to design and deliver teaching and learning. For that matter, online learning is only a form of distance education. Online learning covers both synchronous and asynchronous activities on the part of both students and teachers. So, a webinar is one aspect of online learning and does not provide the full learning experience to the students. According to Desmond Keegan, distance education is characterized by separation of teacher and learner in the learning process. There is influence of an educational organization in the planning, designing and delivering of learning resources and opportunities. Use of technical media for delivery of learning content, provision of two-way communication between student and teacher and student and student and that is an absence of regular learning group. It is in this context that learner support needs to be seen. For some, learner support comes out of the deficient model of student-teacher and student-student separation in distance education and therefore distance education has adopted some excellent learner support practices that are equally useful to conventional education systems as well. What is actually learner support? According to Orman Simpson, learner support can be categorized as academic and non-academic. One is a tutoring role and the other is a counselor role. Often in India, these roles are combined as academic counselors. Mostly, the learner support system in India follows a three-tier model, with the study centers being the nearest action points for the learner and the headquarter being the most distant. Regional centers in between perform some roles of the headquarters as well as that of the students. With many of these activities performed in the three-tier model of learner support can be moved to the online world. However, media and text sensor equation, especially for the learner support, printed text are used for study guides or program guides to inform students. Some universities use telephone for providing remedial learning support, while many use a short messaging service for reminding students about key dates and responsibilities. Radio and television are used for tutoring in addition to the print material for providing learner support. Nowadays, social media is also used to clarify doubts and interact with students. The learner support system can be one-to-one support or group-based. Particularly when it comes to tutoring and content-based clarifications, the group-based learner support is the best. The one-to-one support is used by telephone, chat boards and online services to provide personalized support to the learner. Learner support can be provided at three stages, rather must be provided at three stages, pre-entry during a course and on completion of a course. While pre-entry and end-up course support is provided in many conventional institutions, support during the course is limited. The distance and online education clearly makes provision for support services throughout the course 24 into 7. The National Institute of Open Schooling in India uses a call center to provide learner support 24 into 7. It is learner support that turns content in online distance education into an engaging course with interaction and practice. Effective learner support requires a range of skills and competencies. While subject knowledge is important, the tutors or academic counselors need skills on empathy, listening skills and warmth to provide support to the learners. Sometimes it is difficult to empathize if you are not a distance learner yourself, if you have not studied through distance learning. To provide effective support services, you must feel for the students and have a passion to help them learn. Earlier, the thinking was students read the learning materials to succeed. That's not this current situation. Whereas the current thinking is in order to have success, the students need to learn from the course materials and also interact with students and tutors to succeed. Learner support plays a key role in student success. If that is so, if that is so, how do we monitor and evaluate learner support? How good are we at providing learner support? Research shows that quality in a distance and online course is a function of systems quality, quality of the materials and quality of learner support. These three factors combined support student satisfaction and achievement. From a service quality perspective, we must evaluate learner support using five criteria. Reliability, for example, ability to perform counseling sessions without cancellation, responsiveness, quick and timely delivery of services, assurances, ensuring trust on the system and practices, empathy, the personalized services that are provided to students with warmth and the tangibles related to the work environment, the how welcoming is your physical and online space, including how the system is accessible to people with disabilities. Open and distant learning institutions use a range of tools to monitor support services provided. Some of these could be observation of the counseling session, monitoring of the functioning of the study centers, tracking of assignments, submission, and return, tracking of the material dispersed to the students, monitoring of the evaluated assignments, looking at the student course experience through surveys, and of course, analyzing student dropout, which is a key indicator of the quality of learner support provided. Now, let me turn to the final part of my presentation. What are the lessons, what are the best practices that can be followed by anyone in higher education and definitely also gives an option for us to reflect on what kind of services we are providing to learners and where are the missing gaps and how we can provide better learning learner support to our students. If you have distance and online courses, the first thing is do not assume that if we build it, they will come. This is not going to happen. Institutions need to ensure that students have access to digital tools and appropriate bandwidth. If it is not, learners will not be able to access your digital platforms. In a way, there has been a deficit in service during transitioning into online learning during COVID-19. As the formal, as the normal understanding of providing service was violated, and learners had no choice but to accept what was given to them. Most of the time, the institutions thought they have completed their duties, whereas whereas the students didn't receive the quality service. No one actually challenged the deficiency in service as we were in a pandemic situation. This will not be acceptable in future. Learners will seek more, and institutions will have to clearly indicate who will access a course and what are the essential tools to access where they can find those. Distance and online programs always start with learners at the center. Odial practitioners think about equity first in learning delivery, but are we playing that role well? Something needs to be asked. With the use of an integration of information and communication technologies into teaching and learning, what is needed for the faculty or the academic counselor is to have technological, pedagogical content knowledge. Just having content expertise is not sufficient to deliver online and blended learning experiences. Teachers need to adapt to the new normal. A very good practice that is followed in distance education is to provide tutor comments on assignments submitted by students as feedback. Clear written comments on the assignments help the learner reflect on their learning and support transmission of short term memory to long term memory. Odial teachers always knew that media suitably used can teach well and is not a poor substitute. A recent survey in the UK showed that 68% of students rated the quality of online digital learning as best imaginable, excellent or good. And 62% also rated the support they received for online learning equally high. There is an implicit assumption that the learners today use technology effortlessly and thus they have the skills to use technology for learning. In fact, there is no evidence for that. Students still need self-directed learning skills and digital education skills to engage with technology and our learning environment. So if you are planning to use technology or using technology, engage yourself in preparing students to effectively use ICTs for learning. In fact, open and distance learning, particularly in open and distance learning, it is a common practice to provide orientation to the learners in every course with ICTs that helps students in understanding and navigating the course itself. While a higher education demands certain skills to be successful, education institution can also focus on reducing the stress level and provide counseling services. The counseling services provided by open universities, including their flexible regulations, help learners to be less stressful to complete a course. The support structures available at distance and online institutions could be a lesson for educators to provide similar facilities and flexible routes to learners in conventional universities. Open and distance learning institutions and other higher education centers need to ask several questions. Is there adequate learner support system in place in my institution? Does your course integrate learner support? Do you have a benchmark for providing quality support services? Do you know how the learner support provided by you impact learner success or progress? Or for that matter, how effective is your learner support system? Does your learner support system contribute to lowering dropout and thereby support financial sustainability? I'm sure you will revisit your current practice of learner support in your educational context using some of these questions and some of the ideas that I have alluded today in this presentation. Having convinced that open and distance learning systems are using better learner support services and could do more, I think open universities as leaders could educate the conventional higher education systems better. Thank you for your answer. Thank you so much, Dr. Sanjay Nishwasar for this insightful presentation highlighting the noteworthy aspects of open learning and for talking about the present scenario and the role of open and distance learning and online learning in the pandemic situation while focusing on the importance of learner support and the quality of learner service. Thank you, sir, for enlightening us educators as well for providing better service to our learners. Thank you and now I'd like to request the convener of today's lecture Dr. Vijit Bhuya for offering the formal vote of thanks. Thank you, Dr. Jury Hazarika. I on behalf of the 16th Foundation Day Celebration Committee of KKHSU would like to extend my sincere thanks to Dr. Sanjay Nishwasar, Education Specialist E-Learning at Commonwealth of Learning Canada for delivering the 16th Foundation Day lecture on the topic Supporting Learners in Distance and Online Learning Lessons for Educators. Listening to your lecture was truly an enlightening experience for all of us. Thank you very much, sir. India. I would like to offer my gratitude to Honorable Vice Chancellor I.C. KKHSU, Professor Anand Sharma Sir for his constant support and valuable guidance. I would like to extend my thanks to the Registrar KKHSU for guiding us through and would also like to thank all staff members of the Registrar's establishment for their logistical support. I would like to offer special thanks to Dr. Binod Dekar, Dr. Navankur Pathak and Viswajip Dekar for extending the appropriate IT support for the smooth conduct of the event. I would also like to thank Dr. Sanjeev Bora, Assistant Professor in the Discipline of Political Science KKHSU for his special help. I would also like to offer my special thanks to Dr. Jury Hazarika, Assistant Professor of Mass Communication at KKHSU for hosting today's lecture with great dexterity. Finally, I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to all of our esteemed participants for the gracious presence on today's occasion and making the program a grand success. Thank you all once again. I would like to end.