intro body

India

Indira Gandhi National Open University
Electronic Media Production Centre

Prepared by:

Jai Chandiram

Brief description of the programme

The Electronic Media Production Centre (empc), located in the new Sanchar Kendra at the Maidan Garhi campus of Indira Gandhi National Open University (ignou), has a budget of 700,000,000 rupees to produce educational media materials. The distinguishing feature of ignou’s distance education programme is the extensive and systematic use of educational media in its courses.

Today the empc is an advanced centre for the application of media technologies for distance education and training at the national and international level. The primary functions are: programme production; media education; and research.

Programme production

The tasks involved in programme production include:

      producing audio-visual course materials;

      developing and applying communication technology strategies in distance education;

      developing approaches to integrate communication technologies into existing training programmes;

      undertaking pilot projects in the application of new technologies to improve education, training, and the quality of delivery;

      consulting in education communication systems and technologies;

      expanding the infrastructure for training and delivery in distance education;

      developing high quality course materials for media studies;

      providing an audio-visual library and resource centre; and

      marketing and selling empc–ignou products and facilities.

Media education

At present, the empc offers a one-year Post-Graduate Diploma in Journalism and Mass Communication.

The following additional programmes are under development:

      Diploma in Audio-Video Technology;

      Certificate in Audio Programme Production;

      Certificate in Videography; and

      Certificate in Video Editing.

The following short-term or weekend courses have been planned as an open school:

     ‘Art of Video Presentation’;

     ‘Interview Techniques for Television’;

     ‘TV Studio Lighting Techniques’; and

     ‘Evaluation of Educational Television Programmes’.

Research

The empc conducts the following research tasks:

    regular feedback studies on programme use; and

    specially designed studies to assess quality, content, and impact are undertaken from time to time.

Facilities

The facilities available at empc include:

    Two large video studios equipped with multi-camera set-ups, eng beta sp camcorders, edit suites, Quantel Paint Box, audio studios with digital audio cassette format equipped with eight-track recording facility, audio dubbing suite, audio edit suites with multi-format editing facility, duplication facilities, including format transfers and high speed audio cassette duplication, audio-visual library with more than 564 video and 646 audio cassettes of curriculum-based programmes.

    The Training and Development Communication Channel, which is a teleconferencing facility comprising a studio with teaching end and up-linking for two-way audio and one-way video through insat-2a on the Extended C band being offered jointly with the Indian Space Research Organisation. Presently 23 receiver terminals located all over the county are linked to the teaching-end studio. Another 135 locations have been identified. This facility is being used for counselling and teaching students as well as providing orientation to regional centre personnel.

The system configuration of the Training and Development Communication Channel is as follows: the teaching-end studio (195 square metres and located in the Sanchar Kendra complex) is equipped with two cameras on tripods and a third camera set up as a caption scanner. Audio and video signals from the control room are fed to the Transportable Remote Area Communications Terminal for up-linking to the insat-2a satellite. Direct reception sets are located at state open universities, resource centres, and a few remote study centres, as well as at other user institutions. The return communication is through telephone lines and fax.

Services

The services empc offers include:

    producing audiovisuals;

    broadcasting and telecasting through national channels;

    teleconferencing;

    conducting research in educational media;

    providing training in media production, research, and technical operations; and

    offering short-term courses and workshops in script writing, presentation techniques, videography, and technical operations.

Output

So far, empc’s output includes:

     a total of 606 videos and 659 audios to date;

     about 80 to 100 days of live teleconferences, conducted per year by various schools of as well as other users through the Training and Development Communication Channel; and

    regular feedback reports on data gathered pertaining to the utilisation of the teleconferencing.

Problems encountered

Planning and managing distance education

      During the preparation of audio-visual materials, empc works with academics in developing audio-visual productions. The academics concentrate predominantly on the print materials and consequently the audio-visual component is often only a supplementary input of the course materials. The strengths of audio-visual media are yet to be fully explored.

      Greater integration of audio-visuals into print materials in the course materials is being attempted in programmes.

      Greater interaction with counsellors and facilitating their utilisation of audio-visual materials, encouraging students and counsellors to use them as part of the learning system.

Implementing quality assurance

The quality of empc programmes is assured through:

      training of technical and programme staff

      preview sessions; and

      increasing interaction at the concept development stage.

Using and integrating media in distance education

      Teleconferencing through the Training and Development Communication Channel. The response of students at weekends is more than weekdays when students are not usually available at the study centres. Certain courses have more active responses (for example, those in the School of Nursing and the MBA programme).

Instructional design and production for distance education

      Instructional design essentially comprises of ‘talking heads’ with few print graphics and is more easily accepted by experts. They are yet to experiment with other flexible interactive formats. The cassette mode of audio-visual materials production is yet to evolve.

Learner support systems

      Access to modes of delivery such as lending library system needs to be strengthened.

      Quicker production and timely delivery system are necessary.

The most important issue: Using and integrating media in distance education through the Training and Development Communication Channel

ignou has adopted the multimedia approach to reaching out to its student population. A variety of modes, including print, audio and video, face-to-face counselling, as well as mass media are being adapted. The empc produces the curricula-based audio-visual programmes that are distributed to more than 256 study centres located all over the country. In addition, they are broadcast or telecast over the national network three times a week in regularly allotted time slots.

Yet a need for greater interactivity is always felt. The Training and Development Communication Channel at ignou has added a new dimension, striving to enhance learning by serving as a critical communication bridge. It helps create a ‘virtual classroom’ environment conducive to real-time interaction, lateral learning, immediacy in communications, and participatory decision-making.

The Training and Development Communication Channel has been in operation since 1993. It is a two-way audio, one-way video teleconferencing facility through insat-2a on the Extended C-Band offered jointly with the Indian Space Research Organisation. The teaching end is at empc–ignou, while about 23 receiver ‘nodes’ are located at all state open universities, regional centres, and a few remote study centres. Efforts are underway to set up at least another 135 nodes in the near future. Other ‘user’ institutions such as the All India Management Association, State Bank of India, and National Dairy Development Board have set up 200 receiver nodes of their own. Other major institutional users include the National Open School, National Centre for Education Research and Training (ncert) the state governments of Karnataka and Gujarat, the Department of Women and Children, the Department of Electronics, and the Confederation of Indian Industry.

Training functions

ignou regularly uses the Training and Development Communication Channel for telecounselling and extended counselling with student groups, and for training resource and study centre counsellors and co-ordinators. Different schools at ignou are evolving their own strategies in utilising this facility based on the volume of enrolment in their academic programme, duration of the course, profile of the student groups, and availability of experts.

Other user institutions have put the facility to a variety of uses; for example, the All India Management Association conducts regular classes, and the National Open School and the National Centre for Education Research and Training conduct training sessions for their regional functionaries. The Department of Women and Children launched a popular social welfare programme ‘Indira Mahila Yojana’, to enable all concerned at the state, district, and village levels to interact with the minister in Delhi.

Response

Regular feedback from the Training and Development Communication Channel’s receiver nodes is being sought and available data shows that there have been extremely good responses in some of ignou’s academic programmes in Management, Nursing, Journalism and Mass Communication, Panchayati Raj, and Tourism, and in most sessions held by other institutions such as those in the Department of Women and Child and the ncert], wherein a lot of participatory processes were planned into the sessions and sufficient advance notice given. Most students of ignou seem to prefer after-office hours and weekend sessions. A feedback research study to assess the utilisation of the teleconferencing system by the student sessions is being undertaken and will be completed by year-end.

Other aspects need study, including the policy, technical, co-ordination, and administrative components, as well as the academic, research, and production components that in one way or the other influence the success of the sessions. Better co-ordination at the headquarters, school, empc, Indian Space Research Organisation, and resource and study centre levels are being fine tuned. With resources becoming an additional but critical criteria, efforts are underway to balance in-house use with external use, to make it an economically viable activity. However, there is great scope for improvement in the utilisation of the facility.

Strengths

Technical: The Training and Development Communication Channel is a unique facility using modern satellite-based communication technology. It is eminently suited for mass training simultaneously and cost effective.

Learner content: The Training and Development Communication Channel can improve the quality of training as top level experts could be involved. The asynchronous mode of communication is also possible through recording sessions at the teaching and learning ends and using them in other teaching and learning situations.

Shortcomings

Technical: Due to the poor condition of the telecommunication network in the country, the desired quality and level of interaction is affected. The receiver network is still in the process of expansion.

Learner content: From an academic viewpoint, the audio-visual component, including the Training and Development Communication Channel, is not a mandatory part of the students’ learning package. The optional and supplementary status accorded for various reasons results in it being given lower priority by the schools and students. They are yet to adapt fully to utilising the technology-aided visual medium with adequate graphic support. They also lack sufficient advance planning of content. The high rate of technology obsolescence is also adding to the problem. A lack of adequate co-ordination among the various departments involved delayed information flow, affecting attendance at the sessions.

Students are faced with mainly logistic problems in attending the sessions as most are working or live at long distances from the venue.

National Open School:
The School that Made a Difference

Prepared by:

Professor Mohan B. Menon

Brief description of the programme

The National Open School (nos) was set up in 1989 as an autonomous institution under the Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India. Its objective is to provide continuing and developmental education through distance and open learning to all those outside the formal education system. With a multimedia package of self-instructional print materials, audio-visual support, and face-to-face teaching, nos has a strong and effective network of about 800 academic, vocational, and special (for disabled and disadvantaged target groups) study centres all over India and the Middle East. The study centres perform a variety of functions, including admitting students, supplying learning materials to learners, providing and evaluating assignments, conducting personal contact classes, and organising laboratory, workshop, and other practical experiences. The special features of open learning in nos include freedom to choose subjects according to one’s needs, interests, and abilities; no upper age limit; course credit accumulation over a period of five years; academic and vocational courses offered separately and in combination; transfer of credits from other national boards; and use modern communication and information technologies.

The academic courses nos offers include the following:

      the ‘Foundation Course’, equivalent to grade 8, which serves as a bridge course for joining the secondary level programme;

      the ‘Secondary Education Course’, leading to the Secondary School Certificate (O level);

      the ‘Senior Secondary Education Course’, leading to the Senior Secondary School Certificate (A level);

      open vocational education at basic, elementary, secondary, and senior secondary levels;

      life enrichment and continuing education courses, addressed to the general public and those in various area of work;

      the open basic education programme, aimed at providing continuing education to neo-literates 14 years and older; and

      open elementary education, for the benefit of school-age children who are not attending school.

nos has a diverse student profile, with learners ranging in age from 14 to 89 years, distributed throughout the country. About 94,000 students were enrolled in 1996–97, which increased to an annual enrolment of more than 110,000 students in 1997–98. Most of the students are young adults between the age of 18 and 24 years.

nos is also an apex institution at the national level, and has the mandate to provide professional and technical support to state (and provincial) governments to set up and maintain quality in the state open schools.

Problems encountered

Planning and managing distance education

      Managing flexibility without affecting the quality of instructional organisation has been a major problem considering the variety of target groups and wide geographical distribution.

      Managing the instructional experiences provided in 800 study centres, which are formal institutions accredited by nos, is another major issue.

Implementing quality assurance

      While it has been reasonably possible to maintain quality in instructional inputs, it is difficult to ensure that quality is maintained in contact sessions and practical classes.

      As a large number of part-time tutors (more than 8,000) are involved in organising learning support to students, developing the necessary competencies required for the personal contact programme and counselling in them has been difficult.

Using and integrating media in distance education

      nos does not have production facilities and hence all audio-visual production is done on contract by production and post-production staff, resulting in quantitative and qualitative improvement in media production.

      nos uses interactive technologies mainly through one-way video and two-way audio conferencing for orienting and training study centre staff. However, the use of interactive technologies for learning support has not been possible due to a lack of infrastructure at the receiving end.

      Audio and video programmes are used as supplementary input to the self-instructional print materials. They have not been integrated into the self-instructional print materials mainly because all learners may not have an access to them.

Instructional design and production for distance education

      Vocational courses vary considerably and are from various sectors of the economy. Developing curriculum and designing instructional strategies for vocational courses has not been easy.

      Flexible instructional designs for different categories of target groups is necessary in the Indian context. Learners with various types of disabilities and social disadvantages require modification in instructional design and learning materials.

nos has a diverse student profile, with learners ranging in age from 14 to 89 years, distributed throughout the country. About 94,000 students were enrolled in 1996–97, which increased to an annual enrolment of more than 110,000 students in 1997–98. Most of the students are young adults between the age of 18 and 24 years.

nos is also an apex institution at the national level, and has the mandate to provide professional and technical support to state (and provincial) governments to set up and maintain quality in the state open schools.

Problems encountered

Planning and managing distance education

      Managing flexibility without affecting the quality of instructional organisation has been a major problem considering the variety of target groups and wide geographical distribution.

      Managing the instructional experiences provided in 800 study centres, which are formal institutions accredited by nos, is another major issue.

Implementing quality assurance

      While it has been reasonably possible to maintain quality in instructional inputs, it is difficult to ensure that quality is maintained in contact sessions and practical classes.

      As a large number of part-time tutors (more than 8,000) are involved in organising learning support to students, developing the necessary competencies required for the personal contact programme and counselling in them has been difficult.

Using and integrating media in distance education

      nos does not have production facilities and hence all audio-visual production is done on contract by production and post-production staff, resulting in quantitative and qualitative improvement in media production.

      nos uses interactive technologies mainly through one-way video and two-way audio conferencing for orienting and training study centre staff. However, the use of interactive technologies for learning support has not been possible due to a lack of infrastructure at the receiving end.

      Audio and video programmes are used as supplementary input to the self-instructional print materials. They have not been integrated into the self-instructional print materials mainly because all learners may not have an access to them.

Instructional design and production for distance education

      Vocational courses vary considerably and are from various sectors of the economy. Developing curriculum and designing instructional strategies for vocational courses has not been easy.

      Flexible instructional designs for different categories of target groups is necessary in the Indian context. Learners with various types of disabilities and social disadvantages require modification in instructional design and learning materials.

Learner support systems

      The use of suitable pedagogy in the personal contact programmes has not been easy, mainly because teachers are from formal schools and are unacquainted with distance education methodology.

The most important issue: Using and integrating media in distance education

nos caters to the educational needs of a large number of clientele groups who have been out of the formal schools for one reason or another: social, economic, or geographical disadvantages, or physical and mental disabilities. In order to provide quality education to all these groups in a large country like India, the integration of media is extremely important. However, due to many problems, the major component of the instructional system has been self-instructional print materials distributed to students supported by contact classes and practical work arranged at study centres. Use of media in the system has been marginal for many reasons:

      nos, which was established in 1989, emphasised three main aspects of the print materials. The Media Unit under the Academic Department was visualised only to co-ordinate production of audio-visual programmes using outside contract producers and post-production staff. The media unit developed no further during the eight years nos has been in existence. At the moment, nos is looking for funding from international agencies to set up a temporary production facility as internal funding for production infrastructure will not be forthcoming.

      nos has been using facilities available with Indira Gandhi National Open University (ignou) for one-way video and two-way audio conferencing using the Indian communication satellites insat-2a and insat-2c. The receiving facilities available in the ignou regional centres are also hired by nos. The use has been mainly to orient and train co-ordinators and tutors in the 800 study centres of nos. This has been extremely successful; however, the facility has not always been available as many institutions are making use of it. nos is planning to provide about 10 receiving facilities in Delhi and surrounding areas very soon. nos has about 120 study centres in this region and enrols about 35,000 students annually. It plans to start academic counselling and tutoring using the up-link facility and the proposed receiving facilities.

      nos produces about 60 audio-visual programmes for its secondary (O level) and senior secondary (A level) courses. These programmes are all supplementary and not integrated into the self-instructional print materials. During the instructional design of nos courses it was assumed that not all students would have access to audio-visual programmes and hence the self-instructional print materials were planned to be developed as complete and self-contained from the learning point of view. Such an approach to design can be changed only after ensuring that all students can either watch or listen to video and audio programmes in the study centres or that these are widely broadcast.

      nos has approached Doordarshan (Indian National Television) for broadcast time, but unsuccessfully. Alternatively, the ministries of Human Resource Development and Information and Broadcasting are planning to launch a dedicated educational television channel, initially through a cable network and subsequently through terrestrial transmission], using Doordarshan’s low-power transmitters. It is expected that nos, as well as other educational institutions in the country, will get broadcast time for its programmes. However, if this broadcast channel is available only through a cable network its access will be considerably limited. Most of the villages and small towns in India do not have a cable network facility and even in urban areas it is limited to only well-to-do families. Nevertheless, nos is increasing production, contracting individual producers and institutions so that a substantial number of video programmes are available.

      nos is also initiating an Indian Open Schooling Network using the Internet. This network will be linked with The Commonwealth of Learning’s Commonwealth Electronic Network for School Education. The Indian Open Schooling Network will provide access to the Internet for all schools and students, who register for a nominal fee and take advantage of information updates in school subjects, career information, and, subsequently, on-line nos courses.