Posting by. K.R. Srivathsan
ON OPEN EDUCATION GRID CONSORTIUM PROPOSAL
TOWARDS QUALITY EDUCATION TO ALL INDEPENDENT OF GEOGRAPHY
The goal of NPTEL, Education Grid and such initiatives is to enhance the quality of education in all the colleges, universities and institutions of higher education. Higher Education needs to move further and reach into LLL (Lifelong learning) - continuing education for professionals, supporting mid-career changeover of desiring individuals, etc.
Present NPTEL per se has focused on developing authentic content from the best available faculty in the areas of Engineering and associated core sciences at the undergraduate college level. For a true National Program on Technology Enhanced learning, we have to go much beyond the present confines of the IITs/IISc. The NPTEL content developed thus far is a base on which we can build a truly National Program on Technology Enhanced Learning.
For such a National Programme, our immediate need is to work in the colleges that will benefit from the NPTEL content. This is where Education Grid comes in. As the name implies, Education Grid is a collaboration of colleges and institutions with the objective of quality education independent of geography. It is based upon colleges and institutions sharing experiences, best practices, maintenance and growth of content and caring for their stakeholders. Such a collaboration needs semi-formal structure. The Open Education Grid Consortium proposed here is such a collaborative mechanism. We delineate here several features of such a consortium.
WHY DO WE NEED A CONSORTIUM?
To build and service a Technology Enhanced Learning and teaching environment, all colleges concerned have to collaborate effectively. In an Education Grid, any competent desiring party may offer a service or program over the net and those who desire may subscribe for the same and benefit from it. Such services may have local, regional or national level cooperation. Hence we need a forum with some formal authority to cost such services, approve/recommended tariff for each specific service offered by different players. The costs are typically for covering expenses towards services rendered by people providing the service, for field visits, programs support, subscription for e-books, e-journals, collective bargain on purchases through negotiations, etc. The consortium provides an effective model to formalize such collaborations without hard binding on the members and users of the consortium itself. Consortium with local chapters (say with some 10 colleges in a district) also provides a forum for encourage local area programs in addition to the other regional or national national programs.
I suggest that we have a national Open Education Grid Consortium with a clear charter of its working and terms of reference for its members. We shall also encourage a number of local chapters - about one per district or a cluster of neighbourhood districts. In the next section we show a way of launching the consortium at the earliest.
OPEN EDUCATION GRID CONSORTIUM CHARTER
CONSORTIUM OBJECTIVES
The principal objective of the consortium is to enhance the quality of education and the learning ambiance offered in the colleges very substantially through an effective collaboration between the members of the consortium. This collaboration will
The consortium will admit institutions, colleges, R&D organizations, different industries and government organizations as its members.