One Day Meet for Directors of DDE on Mentoring for Assessment and Accreditation

One day meeting was started with a brief inaugural session where Prof. Anirban Ghosh from NSOU welcomed the Vice Chancellor, NSOU, Prof. Madhu Parhar, Prof. Manjulika Srivastava, Dr. Mumtaj and Directors of various Directorates and other members of the University. Prof. Parhar in her brief presentation outlined the need for the meeting. She informed the status of Higher Education as per the report of AISHE and highlighted the enrolment data in Distance Education Institutes. Prof. Subha Sankar Sarkar, Vice Chancellor of NSOU highlighted the status of Higher Education in West Bengal and particularly the situation of Distance Education. He welcomed the Directors and expressed his concern on assessment and accreditation of Dual Mode Universities offering distance education programmes.

Immediately after the inaugural, Prof. Manjulika Srivastav from IGNOU presented the evolution of the process of Assessment and Accreditation of ODL Institutions. She began with UGC (ODL) Regulations notified in 2017 and all the amendments. She discussed the constitution of the Task Force on Assessment and Accreditation under the Chairmanship of Prof. Nageshwar Rao, Vice Chancellor IGNOU in 2018. National Regional and Local Consultations were done, and feedback was obtained from the stakeholders. In January 2019, the manual was uploaded on the NAAC website. In her second presentation she explained the distribution of metrics and the various criteria. She also discussed the weightages across Key Indicators. She analysed the difference of these weightages among the Open Universities and Dual Mode Universities. She described in detail, the Student Satisfaction Survey to the Directors ‘of the Directorates. Directors had several questions and concerns regarding the various Indicators and Metrics and how to calculate. Prof. Manjulika responded to the queries of the Directors.

Dr. Mumtaj form NAAC, described the eligibility criteria, process of filling up the forms, criteria and weightages and grading. She explained the requirements and how to fill the forms Online. She explained the data validation methodology of NAAC and guidelines for creation of IQAC. Directors had several doubts which she clarified. To do the pilot testing of the metrics developed for the DDU in the Manual, she divided the participants in three groups. Each group had to work on few tables. Later each group presented their work and provided the feedback on the metrics.