Capacity Building Workshop for Virtual Open Schooling - February 11-13,2013, IGNOU, New Delhi
Capacity Building Workshop for Virtual Open Schooling
New Delhi, 4/3/2013: A three day Technical workshop was organized by National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS) with support of Commonwealth Educational Media Centre for Asia (CEMCA) at the IUC-TEFED Multimedia Lab of the Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU), New Delhi from 11-13 February, 2013. This activity is in accordance with the MOU signed by NIOS and CEMCA to work together to develop and promote Virtual Open Schooling (VOS) in India amongst other cooperation activities. The objective of the workshop was to sensitize the academic staff of NIOS and other State Open Schools towards the use of online technologies and the emerging technologies to be used in the planned Virtual Open Schooling platform. CEMCA had initiated the feasibility study of Virtual Open Schooling in India which was also released during the workshop. The feasibility report emphasizes integration of existing technologies at NIOS and building an open platform to provide open courses and didactic learning through a suitable Learning Management System (LMS).
Working on the recommendations of the feasibility report, the workshop was designed to provide skill training on the use of MediaWiki & Moodle LMS available with the NIOS. Staff of NIOS and representatives of State Open Schools (Karnataka, Rajasthan, Assam, Gujarat, Jammu & Kashmir, Tamil Nadu, Kerala) participated in the workshop. In his inaugural address, Dr. Sanyam Bhardwaj, Director (SSS), NIOS mentioned that Open and distance learning system in a better manner could be reached to a large number of students through virtual mode. Dr. Sanjaya Mishra, Director, CEMCA expressed that while VOS is not a new idea, we are working on the feasibility report and the recommendations of the national consultation organized earlier by NIOS and CEMCA on the theme. Dr. S.S. Jena, Chairman, NIOS stated that in VOS everything should be virtual starting from admission to examination. Technology is moving fast and new generation is moving with the times using online system more.
While the workshop venue was provided by with the courtesy of Prof. Madhu Parhar, Director, IUC-TEFED, IGNOU, the technical support for the sessions were provided by experts from IGNOU, namely Dr. Pankaj Khare, Registrar (SRD), Dr. Ramesh Sharma, Deputy Director (Defense unit), and MS. G. Mythili, Analyst (STRIDE). Access to the NIOS’s virtual platforms was facilitated by Mr. S.K. Prasad of NIOS. The participants received an opportunity to create user account and work on wiki and LMS. The three day workshop provided hands on experience to the participants and they demonstrated skill on using wiki and Moodle for teaching and learning. While the workshop was highly successful, at the end, it was observed that a detailed workshop on instructional design for online learning may be needed by the participants to further take forward the concept of Virtual Open Schooling.
