'ICT initiatives should reach rural colleges too'

Additional Chief Secretary to Government of Karnataka (Higher Education) Bharat Lal Meena said the state government has entered into an agreement through which sharing of human resources is enabled among private universities, government colleges and grant-in-aid colleges in the State.

He said the teachers from grant-in-aid, government, private colleges and universities can upload the videos of their lecture to the server of the Higher Education Department to be shared among those who would like to learn from it. Some well-known private universities and colleges have already uploaded their teaching methodology and lectures on the web portal, he said while speaking at a conference on ‘Issues and Concerns of Affiliated Colleges’ organised by the College Development Council of Mangalore University here on Friday.

Answering to an attendance in the classroom needs to be replaced with the new e-attendance software by the teachers, he said. It will allow teachers to mark attendance on smart devices, such as smartphones and the same data getting registered in the server as well. This will also prevent tampering of the attendance, he felt.

Bharat Lal Meena said the government has introduced e-feedback system, a part of Gnana Sangama, the government’s ambitious initiative to adopt technology in higher education. The e-feedback system is linked to the attendance and timetable of a student. The feedback will be uploaded to the server and college principals can monitor the feedback and the feedback would also help the teachers to improve their teaching skills, he said.
  
Information and communication technology (ICT) initiatives have been introduced to facilitate ease of academic reach for students in colleges and universities, he said. At present, the ICT implementation has become a top-down approach. The use of ICT should penetrate down to all the colleges in rural areas as well. The teachers should make use of the ICT tools, thereby improve the quality of education, he said.  
Calling upon teachers to prepare the new generations to face future, he said colleges and universities are temples of learning. Students are the biggest stakeholders of education system. The perception of teachers on government colleges should change, he said.

Stressing the need for accreditation of colleges, he said educational institutions that are not accreditated should make an effort to achieve it. Hardly a few colleges and universities have a record of their alumni. The alumni can be a source of funding for the colleges and universities. The colleges that come under Mangalore University jurisdiction can serve as a skill hub of the world, he said. 

UGC Additional Secretary Dr P Prakash said affiliated colleges should strive to impart quality education to students. Though education sector requires 6% of the GDP, only 3.8% has been earmarked for education and in this, only 1.4 % comes to higher education, he said.

There is a need to address the issue of permanent affiliation and accreditation for colleges. The UGC has introduced e-PG Pathshala, an ambitious project to make available high quality e-content for students of post graduate courses, he said.
 
Presiding over the programme, Mangalore University Vice Chancellor K Byrappa said the full lecture of teachers in the university would be recorded and uploaded on its web portal. The college teachers should make use of the state-of-the art laboratories in the university and write research proposals to funding agencies of the government to get grant for research activities. The teachers should bring in inclusiveness in higher education, he said.