The document discusses opportunities and challenges related to the use of Open Educational Resources (OERs) in distance education in India. It provides an overview of India's education system, distance education scenario, and various national and institutional OER initiatives. Some key challenges to adopting OERs include lack of awareness, skills, and clear policies, as well as issues relating to infrastructure, sharing culture, OER quality, and standards.

1. Use of Open Educational Resources
in Distance Education –
Opportunities and Challenges in
Indian Scenario
Sujata Santosh
Indira Gandhi National Open University

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Overview of the presentation
 Education Scenario in India
 OERs in Distance Education
 OER Initiatives in India
 OER initiatives in IGNOU
 Policy Initiatives at National Level
 Policy Initiatives at Institutional Level
 Challenges related to the use of OERs in India

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Introduction
OERs are a global phenomenon and have become
significantly important in education systems across the
world.
(Venkaiah, 2008; Geith and Vignare, 2008; Rolfe, 2012;
Abeywardena, Tham and Raviraja, 2012)

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Education scenario in India
 India has a large and complex education system with
around 700 universities and 35,000 affiliated colleges.
 Despite more than 20 million students in these
institutions, this constitutes only a fraction India’s
population which makes to college.
 With one-third of the population being illiterate,
providing access to adequate learning resources of good
quality is a huge problem.
(UGC, 2013; MHRD, 2013)

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Higher Education in India
 GER in Higher Education in India is 20.4 percent (MHRD,
2013)
– 79 percent are in under graduate level
– 12 percent are in post graduate level
(Source: MHRD, 2013)

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Focus of Higher Education in India
 Access
 Equity
 Excellence

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Challenges faced by the Education
System in India
 Paucity of good teachers
 Inadequate infrastructure
 Lack of well-equipped libraries
 Lack of good quality instructional materials

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OERs in Education
 The National Knowledge Commission (2007) has
recommended increasing the amount of Open
Educational Resources (OER) and Open Access (OA) to
address these pressing problems.
 The widespread availability of high quality educational
resources is imperative to change the paradigm of
teaching for the better and improve the overall quality of
education.

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Distance Education scenario in India
Distance Education in India caters to a wide range of
learners with varied learning styles, preferences, with
heterogeneous cultural backgrounds, economical status
and geographical locations.

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Open and Distance Learning (ODL) in India
• enhancing the gross enrolment ratio
• democratization of higher education to large
segments of the Indian population
• reaching out to the unreached
• providing opportunities for up-gradation of skills and
qualifications
• meeting the demands of lifelong learning

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Distance Education scenario in India
 Total enrolment in higher education estimated at
28.56 million.
 Distance enrolment constitutes 12.5% of the total
enrolment in higher education
(UGC, 2013; MHRD, 2013)

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Distance Education scenario in India
 15 open universities – 1 National Open University and 14
State Open Universities
 166 Dual Mode providers of higher education
 28 Distance Education Institutes
 17 Open Schools
(UGC, 2013; MHRD, 2013)

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OER Initiatives in India

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Consortium for Educational Communication
(CEC)
 an inter-university centre set up
by the University Grants
Commission (UGC)
 22 Educational Multimedia
Research Centres (EMRCs)
 produces TV programmes on
syllabus-based topics
 Learning Object Repository (LOR)
 Digital Video Repository (DVR)
CEC Home Page
(http://cec.nic.in/Pages/Home.aspx)

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National Science Digital Library (India)
National Science Digital Library Home page
(http://nsdl.niscair.res.in/jspui/)
 an initiative of the Council of
Scientific and Industrial
Research (CSIR)
 provides free access to
supplementary curriculum
based content to address the
information needs of the
undergraduate students of
science.

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Project Ekalavya
eKalavya Home Page
(http://ekalavya.it.iitb.ac.in/)
 an open source educational
initiative by the Indian Institute of
Technology, Bombay.
 content development in Indian
languages.
 an endeavour to provide an
interactive platform for the
creation, absorption,
dissemination and usage of
knowledge.

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Project OSCAR (Open Source Courseware
Animations Repository)
Project OSCAR Home Page
(http://oscar.iitb.ac.in/)
 An initiative by the Indian
Institute of Technology, Bombay.
 is a large repository of web-
based, interactive animations and
simulations, in the form of
Learning Objects (LOs), for
teaching various concepts and
technologies.

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National Programme on Technology
Enhanced Learning (NPTEL)
NPTEL Home Page
(http://nptel.ac.in/)
 a joint initiative by seven Indian
Institutes of Technology (IITs)
and the Indian Institute of
Science (IISc).
 aims to enhance the quality of
engineering education in the
country by providing easy
access to curriculum based
video and web courses.

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NME-ICT Web portal — Sakshat
Sakshat Home Page
(http://www.sakshat.ac.in/)
 Launched in 2009 by the
Ministry of Human Resource
and Development (MHRD).
 provides one-stop access to e-
content, e-journals and e-books.
 aim is to leverage the potential
of ICT, in providing high quality
personalized and interactive
knowledge modules over the
internet for all the learners.

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National Repository of Open Educational
Resources (NROER)
NROER Home Page
(http://nroer.gov.in/home/repository)
 an initiative by Ministry of
Human Resource and
Development (MHRD)
 is a learning repository for open
educational resources.
 offers digital resources such as
videos, audio, interactive media,
images, wiki pages, and
documents, for all school
subjects and grades in multiple
languages.

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Agropedia
Agropedia Home Page
(http://agropedia.iitk.ac.in/)
 is an online knowledge repository
for information related to
agriculture in India.
 This national portal is designed as
an agricultural Wikipedia
 provides localized content and
hosts wide range of agricultural
information.

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ePathshala
ePathshala Home Page
(http://epgp.inflibnet.ac.in/)
 is an initiative of the University
Grants Commission (UGC)
 provides free access to
standardized e-textbooks for
postgraduate courses in
different universities of the
country.

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OER Initiatives in IGNOU

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eGyankosh
eGyanKosh Main Page
(http://www.egyankosh.ac.in)
 Launched in 2005 by IGNOU.
 access to around 95 percent of
the self-instructional print
material (around 2481 courses) of
IGNOU.
 Wiki for collaborative content
generation.

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IGNOU – YouTube Channel
IGNOU-YouTube Channel
(http:// www.youtube.com/user/egyankoshIGNOU)
 Online access to more than
2,200 courses and 2,000 video
lectures.

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Flexilearn
FlexiLearn Main page
(http:// www.ignouflexilearn.ac.in)
 a personal learning space
 Any one can register and
explore courses for free.
 More than 936 open courses
made available for self guided
and self-paced learning.
 (At present inactive.)

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Policy Initiatives at National Level
 National Policy on Education in 1992 emphasized the use of
educational technology to improve the quality of education
 IT Action Plan by Indian National Task Force on Information
Technology and Software Development in 1998 stressed on
the use of emerging new technologies in education
 Tenth Five Year Plan (year 2002-2007) emphasized knowledge
and use of new information and communication technology
for ensuring quality in teaching and research.

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Policy Initiatives at National Level
 National Knowledge Commission (2007) - recommended
making use of globally available OER and Open Access (OA)
for increasing the widespread availability of high-quality
educational resources.
 National Mission on Education through ICTs (NMEICT),
launched by the MHRD in 2009 - leveraging ICTs to provide
quality, personalized, interactive knowledge modules over
the Internet/ intranet to all learners in higher education
institutions, any time anywhere

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Policy Initiatives at National Level
 Twelfth Five Year Plan emphasised creation of knowledge
based resources.
 India Vision 2020 emphasized development of virtual labs and
open access content repositories.

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Policy Initiatives at institutional Level
 ICT Policy
 IPR Policy
 Policy and guidelines related to the e-learning platform
and content
 Awareness raising and Capacity building of the faculty
 Infrastructure and resources
 Incentives and rewards

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Impediments to the use of OERs
 Technical barriers such as lack of broadband access.
 Economic barriers such as inadequate resources to invest in
the required hardware and software.
 Social barriers such as a lack of the skills needed to use
technology.
 Policy-oriented barriers such as the lack of clear policy in
institutions regarding OER.
 Legal barriers such as the time and expense associated with
gaining permission to use.
(OECD, 2007)

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Challenges Related to the use of OERs in
Distance Education in India
 Lack of awareness
 Lack of skills
 Need for a culture of sharing and openness
 Infrastructure and Technologies
 Institutional Policies
 Quality of OER
 Standards and guidelines

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Challenges Related to the use of OERs in
Distance Education
 Sustainability of OER Initiatives
 Copyright
 Knowledge and Use of Open Licensing
 Localization of Content

34. Thank You