National Consultation on OER for Skill Development organized
National Consultation on OER for Skill Development organized
New Delhi; 29/11/2014: Commonwealth Educational Media Centre for Asia (CEMCA), New Delhi organized a day long National Consultation on Open Educational Resources (OER) for Skill Development at Hotel Royal Plaza, New Delhi on November 28, 2014. A total of 35 participants including OER experts and Skill Development practitioners from different parts of India participated in the consultation. The experts represented different educational institutions, TVET institutions, other private skill development organisations and government agencies such as National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC), National Skill Development Authority (NSDA) of Government of India, and private companies such as IL&FS, Bosch, etc.
The basic objective of this consultation was to organize interaction among concerned policy makers, practitioners, knowledge and skill development providers, OER volunteers, academicians, livelihoods agencies. Professor Vinay Kumar Pathak, Vice Chancellor, Vardhaman Mahaveer Open University, Kota formally inaugurated the consultation and sketched the fact on importance of OER in skilling a huge number of Indian population. Professor V.S. Prasad, former Director NAAC delivered the keynote address. Explaining the philosophy of OER in his address, Prof. Prasad stated that education is a social function and knowledge is a public good, a public property and it should be a resource for everybody. Professor Rakesh Khurana, Chairman, KNI Trust gave an overview on the consultation. Dr. Sanjaya Mishra, Director, CEMCA enumerated the objectives of the consultation and facilitated the interactions among the expert participants.
Mr. R C M Reddy, Managing Director, IL&FS explained the concept of Skill 2.0, where the target is not only the dropouts but all the student community. Dr Sapna Poti of NSDC addressed the issue of the respect for skilling, while Ms. Ruchira Chandra of NSDA elaborated the National Policy on Skill Development, 2009 and other initiatives of the Government of India. Among the expert participants Dr. B. Chandrasekar, Mr. Varun Arya, Dr. N T Yaduraju, Mr. Viplav Baxi, Dr. Anjlee Prakash, Dr. Arupjyoti Choudhury, Dr. Asfa M Yasin, Mr. Navin Pathak, Dr. Chandrabhanu Pattanayak, Dr. O P Goel, Dr S.K. Soam, Mr Ajay Balakrishnan, Mr. Anurag Gupta shared their views on the areas like Skill Development – Challenges for India, Using OER for Skill Development, Learning Content in Sector Skills, Technology and OER: Case Studies.
A set of recommendations were made by all the participants, where it was considered that OER provides an excellent route to deliver skill training to millions. Being digital and online, it can complement and supplement face-to-face training initiatives. People can use OER for learning, and attend hands on training sessions for polishing their skills. Moreover, creating a repository of OER on different levels and discipline areas would be huge resource that can be used by all the training institutions in the country without duplicating efforts on training materials. Dr. Ankuran Dutta, Programme Officer, CEMCA extended the vote of thanks to all the expert participants. CEMCA organized this consultation in collaboration with KNI Trust, Gurgaon.
