It was a historic day for the University of Madras yesterday, with President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam inaugurating the Virtual University Programme jointly promoted by the Universities of Madras, Mumbai and Calcutta.
Apart from teleresource-sharing between the three universities, it would enable students of all distance education programmes and affiliated colleges of the universities to access virtual classrooms manned by expert teachers.
In his tele-address to the students of the universities from Rashtrapati Bhavan through uplink facilities provided by the Indian Space Research Organisation, Dr. Kalam said the collaboration to create educational synergies was an important day in the annals of Indian higher education.
Universities should facilitate knowledge creation and utilisation, he said. This was the key to the success of the Provision of Urban Amenities in Rural Areas (PURA) scheme that facilitated rural self-reliance. Though the country had excellent educational institutions, they could not provide seamless access between providers and consumers of knowledge.
dr, Kalam opined that exchange of a common database should be facilitated and university libraries digitised to enable seamless access. Digital collaborations should be arranged between students (to enable) the virtual university to attract talent from all over the world.
The universities should provide bandwidth on demand to "make the whole country connected through a knowledge grid," he said.
The students asked Dr. Kalam questions on issues such as compulsory primary education, disaster management, the human development index, food security, protection of herbal resources, rural self-development and solid waste management.
To another question from a Chennai student, he said tele-education would motivate young teachers to connect with experts and other teachers. An applet available with the Rashtrapati Bhavan website (http://presidentofindia.nic.in) would enable the conversion of visual material to audio text to enable visually-challenged students reap the benefits of tele-education, he told another Chennai student.
An expert committee is framing an e-learning curriculum for undergraduate students and a tele-link would soon be formed with Anna University to enable State-level connectivity between affiliated colleges and distance education study centres to bring the latter on a par with institutions offering regular courses.
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