27th June, 2024
Mumbai: The University of Mumbai’s (MU) distance learning unit will soon start online courses. The varsity’s Centre for Distance and Open Education (CDOE), previously known as the Institute of Distance and Open Learning (IDOL), will begin by offering MA Sociology and a few diploma and certificate programmes in online mode on a pilot basis in the current academic year 2024-25. It plans to add online versions of other distance learning programmes later.
While the distance learning section was added to MU more than 50 years ago in 1971, until now its offerings have been limited to correspondence courses, where students educate themselves through self-learning material (SLM), while the varsity evaluates them through year-end examinations.
With online programmes, the learners will not only be provided with audio-visual lectures and other e-content, they will be able to interact with the teachers regularly. The students will be assessed based on the continuous evaluation of their performance throughout the course duration as well as the term-end exams, which will also be conducted online.
Unlike regular programmes, which are offered to only those who belong to the geographical area under the varsity's jurisdiction, enrollment to online courses isn’t bound by state or even international borders. CDOE Director Santosh Rathod said that the MA Sociology course is expected to be rolled out in a fortnight following approval from the varsity’s statutory bodies.
“We are ready with the learning material for the course. We are in the process of choosing the learning management system (LMS) to run the programme. The proposal for deciding the course fees has been sent to the university’s fee fixation committee," he said.
In addition to the post-graduation (PG) course, the university will initially offer a diploma course in the English language and another course on ‘Moodle and LMS’. A bilingual diploma programme in education is also on the cards. All these courses, which will account for two academic credits each, will be offered after class 12.
These programmes will be available to undergraduate courses as open electives and vocational and skill enhancement courses, which are among the myriad components of the new National Education Policy (NEP)-aligned college course framework.
CDOE has formed a Centre for Excellence for E-content Development (CEED) to prepare digital learning material for its online courses. Subject experts from various institutes have been roped in to help the university develop e-content for these programmes.
Source: freepressjournal.in
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