DU gets net savvy

With a deadline of December this year, Delhi University’s Institute of Life long learning is preparing to make lectures and some of the best course content available online.
The Human Resource development Ministry has awarded ILLL a 2 crore pilot project to develop e content for 14 papers of seven discipline. The list includes mathematics, botany, chemistry, economics, history and commerce.
The project is a step in the direction of ILLL’s Rs 100 crore proposal to set up a national centre for e-content development for the undergraduate and postgraduate courses under the University Grants Commission’s Model Curricula.
If the plan is successfully implemented, it would bring about a significant change in the field of higher learning as the best content and lectures would be accessible to eligible students throughout the country. Furthermore undergraduate and post -graduate studies would be available under the same roof.
E learning would also enable students of any college to access lectures on different topics. In addition to providing information about a particular topic , the e portal would include video lectures, online quizzes, animations, simulations to help students achieve a better level of understanding.
The e-learning material would include certain value additions to the traditional content such as a glossary of difficult terms, common misconceptions, pop-ups, points to ponder, web links etc
The major concern regarding the implementation of this measure has been that there might be a compromise in the quality of education provided. The varsity is however planning to set up an internal quality assurance cell to assess, monitor and enhance quality standards.
According to Vice -Chancellor, DU, Deepak Pental, “We are not even in the top 10 Asian Universities despite having all the programmes, faculty and infrastructure. There’s need for enhancing quality on all fronts and we’d like to have an internal mechanism for this. We would like to compare our university with global standards for which we may even consider inviting an international agency. The academic council would be consulted for its opinion before we proceed on this.”