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Tuesday, November 6, 2012

The Assam Agricultural University launches e-learning project

The Assam Agricultural University will launch e-learning in classrooms with a five-day training programme for teachers from today.

Resource persons from Sathguru Management Consultants, Hyderabad and College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Cornell University, US, will impart training to the teachers in different phases.

Vice-chancellor K.M. Bujarbaruah said the colleges under the university were well equipped and it was time to inculcate change and carry knowledge to those who were devoid of it through this process.

“In India in 1951, there were 30 universities and 634 colleges to cater to a 351 million population, in 2011 it rose to 635 universities for 1,300 million. At present, the student strength is 1.69 crore and the gross enrolment ratio is 15 to 16 per cent and is predicted to be 22 per cent in the 12th Financial Plan but this is very poor. In such a scenario, it would not be viable to open up more colleges and universities and e-learning could be an alternative,” Bujarbaruah said.

In case of Assam, the vice-chancellor said, only about 150 students graduated from the only agriculture university in the state each year to cater to a 3-lakh population, which was very low.

Bujarbaruah said in 2006 in the US, only 14 per cent of the students had opted for e-learning which increased to 41 in 2009 and by 2014, it was expected to touch 81 per cent.

“In comparison, the number of colleges in India subscribing to this learning process is very less. We have to adapt to the changes and fast so that we do not lag behind,” he said.

Explaining how the training process would work, the information specialist of Sathguru Management Consultants, Anantha Murthy, said the company would train the teachers on online learning and training (OLAT) developed by University of Zurich. This would entail uploading content, word document, classroom video synchronised with text.

“E-learning will support classroom teaching or the teachers and students can upload contents, have blogs and forums and interactive sessions without coming to the classroom. Teachers can take online tests and students can post offline questions. Sometimes it is seen that students might miss a point during classroom teaching or hesitate to ask questions, this e-learning can help them. The usual procedure is to issue a username and password for each student,” he said.

The second phase of the e-learning process will be implemented in December under which two resource persons from Cornell University will train the teachers on content capture and media production (classroom lectures can be captured through audio visual equipment).

The Assam Agricultural University will be the third agri institute in the country after Benaras Hindu University, Sardar Vallabhai Patel University of Agriculture and University, Meerut, to implement the e-learning project under United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in India.

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