Workshop on Academic Counselling for Open and Distance Learners of NSOU
Commonwealth Educational Media Centre for Asia (CEMCA) supports Netaji Subhas Open University (NSOU), Kolkata for a collaborative 3-year project titled “Increase Access and Improve Institutional Capacity for sustainable Development through Vocational Education & Training”. The two-day Workshop on “Academic Counselling for Open and Distance Learners (ODL) of NSOU” was organized on 7-8 March, 2020 at NSOU, Durgapur RC, West Bengal with an objective to orient the academic counsellors of the university to cope up with the teaching- learning situations in 21st Century. 40 (Male 35 and Female 05) academic counsellors including the newly recruited faculty members of the university attended the workshop and participated in the hands-on training.
Shri Prosenjit Bhattacharya, Dy. Director, welcomed all the participants and the resource persons on behalf of the Regional Centre-Durgapur, NSOU. Shri Bhattcharya congratulated the SVS-NSOU & COL-CEMCA along with all the colleagues both teaching and non-teaching for organizing such workshop at the Durgapur RC.
Professor Anirban Ghosh, Project Director, NSOU in his address, described the objectives and the outcome achieved so far during the first two years. Dr. Ghosh elaborated the intents and activities to be carried out in the present year i.e. 2019-2020. Dr. Ghosh continued his speech with understanding the concepts of counselling, how the distance learners can be supported, significance of counseling in Distance Education (DE), when counseling is required and for whom it is required etc. Dr. Ghosh elaborated the use of media in counselling for distance learners with the important activities of the project which aim to orient the academic counsellors in the 21st Century learning environment, strengthening the OER repository and assessment of the outcome of the three-year project.
Dr. Manas R. Panigrahi, Sr. Programme Officer-Education, CEMCA introduced the theme and highlighted the objectives of the present workshop. He also elaborated the learning style and learners’ attitude in the 21st Century. Smt. Kasturi Sinha Ghosh, Co-Project Investigator proposed vote of thanks at the end of inaugural session.
Dr. Panigrahi started with his cogent introductory speech on behalf of the workshop. Gradually he continued with the expectations of the participants and elucidates the following:
- Open and Distance Education (DE) in 21st Century.
- Nature, Characteristics and Importance of Learning Materials in Distance Education.
- Role and Responsibility of the Academic Counselors in ODL mode.
- A comparison between 21st Century ODL Learners and NSOU Learners.
- Various arts to design a comprehensive Counseling session in ODL mode.
Dr. Barnali Roy Choudhury, Assistant Professor of LIS, NSOU took her session through Skype and spoke on various Technologies adopted by NSOU such as: Moodle, LMS, MOOC, e-Content. She suggested that NSOU counselors may use: Online teaching in addition of face to face teaching; Develop audio-visual resources for the learners with the help of Computers, LMS, etc. She also demonstrated the NSOU OER repository and all the participants practiced during the session.
All the sessions involved activity/ hands-on training in which the participants did their work on their own with the help of the resource persons. The workshop ended with the distribution of certificates.
