To cross over any barrier between members all the while, ODL offers self-organized learning in which the educator and understudies are isolated by reality, utilizing instructional materials, for example, print materials, sound and video tapes, CD ROMs, TV and radio communication, just as sight and sound segments, for example, PCs and satellites transmission. The examination focus encourages the student to explain questions on academic and authoritative quarries. Counseling given by the Academic guides who are specialists in the subject. These advising sessions are intuitive to give chance to talk about and to appreciate human cooperation with guide and companion gatherings.
The printed investigation material gave is self-instructional and adequate to help the student in understanding the substance and ideas and set themselves up academically for directing, composing task reactions, and term-end examinations. The system of assessment in open and distance learning contains self-appraisal activities, assignments and classes/workshops/field visits, the Term End Examination toward the finish of the semester/year, and Projects, Internships, etc.;(During studies). The modular course structure is extra fascination of ODL system.
1.3.3 Categories of Learners under ODL system
Everyone including housewives, professionals, student’s even retired people, who completed 18 years can admissions for any programme at open and distance education system. The system of open and distance learning trains the adults in efficient management of time, place, and pace of education. Open and distance education is flexible and student-centered in approach.
Figure1.1 Categories of Learners under ODL system
1.4. Origin and growth of ODL system- a stress of time
Understanding the limitation of the formal education and so as to utilize the cutting-edge correspondence technology to spread education, a feasible option was the need of great importance. The establishment of the Open University in the U.K., the main solid distance encouraging University bestowing higher education, gave the genuinely necessary impulse to educational organizers and arrangement creators. Consequently, Open University system started with the establishing of the U.K. Open University in 1969. Approach creators started to consider the attractive quality of building up such a University in India to tackle a portion of the issues looked by the educational system.
Depicting the significance of ODL system, that ODL in Asia and Pacific (AP) locale is assuming an inexorably critical job in national higher education system and turning into a significant strategy decision for generally nations. The most particular element is enormous understudy populace in ODL foundations. For instance, in any event seven ODL organizations in the AP locale are uber (colleges with more than 100,000 dynamic understudies in qualification level courses). AIOU (Pakistan), Anadolu (Turkey), CCRTVU (China), IGNOU (India), KNOU (Korea), STOU (Thailand), UT (Indonesia), and PNU (Iran) have more than 5.6 million dynamic understudies all together starting at 2004.
Punjabi University, Patiala was the second University in India to dispatch correspondence courses through its Directorate of Correspondence Courses (DCC) in 1968, and it was the principal University to present territorial vehicle of guidelines. In resulting years number of CCIs expanded quickly. As on date, India has more than 180 CCIs/DDE appended to regular Universities (Srivastava, 2014). During the primary decade of correspondence education (1962-72), the accompanying 13 correspondence units of traditional colleges were set up which offered diverse Post Graduate, Under Graduate, Diploma, and Certificate projects to take into account the necessities of lack of students.
Other than these notable uber colleges, many distance encouraging colleges in the area have been built up more as of late and gave tertiary dimension education to those looking for proceeding with education openings. With 66% of the worldwide populace, the AP locale is known to have more than 500 million potential understudies for ODL establishments. ODL has been getting up to speed quick in all nations of the world-whether created or creating, communist or entrepreneur, and western or non-western.
In the propelled nations of the West, ODL is polished in various structures for well more than 150 years. Be that as it may, distance education in India isn't so old; it is for barely forty years as it were. Distance education in its prior type of correspondence education began in the West amidst the nineteenth century, however in India; it had started right around a century later as postal correspondence education. The International Correspondence Schools (ICS) and the British Institutes are the noticeable organizations of postal courses began in Bombay, which offered an assortment of postal courses in territories of designing, the executives, engineering, inside beautification, dress making, reporting, excellence care, photography, and cartooning, business expressions and so on.
Distance education in India, in formalized structure, has its beginning in a proposal of the Central Advisory Board of Education (CABE), made in 1961, that an itemized investigation of correspondence courses be made. A board of trustees was set up under the chairmanship of Dr. D.S.Kothari to look at the issue prescribed for beginning of correspondence courses in light of their adaptability, financial reasonability and creativity. The University Grants Commission (UGC) chose to empower low maintenance education, and the University of Delhi was approached to embrace a pilot venture by organizing correspondence courses. In like manner the University built up its School of Correspondence Courses and Continuing Education in the year 1962.
The Education Commission named by the Govt. of India in 1964, to inform on the appropriation with respect to general standards and strategies for the improvement of education in the entirety of its perspectives, unequivocally upheld the advancement of correspondence education. In its report it suggested that 'open doors for low maintenance education through night schools and possess time education through projects like correspondence courses ought to be reached out as broadly as would be prudent and these projects ought to incorporate courses of science and technology.”
Table 1.1 Correspondence Course Institutions in India (CCIs) during the First Decade (1962-72)
Name of the CCIs Name of the Conventional Universities Year of Establishment School of Correspondence Courses and Continuing Education University of Delhi 1962
Directorate of Correspondence Courses Punjabi University 1968
Institute of Correspondence Studies and Continuing Education University of Rajasthan 1968
Institute of Correspondence Courses and Continuing Education University of Mysore 1969
Institute of Correspondence Courses and Continuing Education Meerut University 1969
Institute of Correspondence Courses and Continuing Education Madurai Kamaraj University 1971
Directorate of Correspondence Courses Himachal Pradesh University 1971
Diectorate of Correspondence Courses Punjabi University 1971
Diectorate of Correspondence Courses Bombay University 1971
Institute of Correspondence Courses Sri Venkateshwara University 1972
School of Correspondence Courses Andhra University 1972
School of Distance Education Central Institute of English and Foreign Languages 1972
By the end of the sixties beginning an Open University in India was felt by the Govt. of India. A working gathering established in 1971 under the chairmanship of Shri G. Parthasarthy recommended that the Govt. of India ought to build up an Open University with the goal that understudies from the remotest pieces of the nation could approach education and get degrees identical to those granted by Universities situated in urban regions. Altogether the gathering likewise made a particular recommendation with respect to the arrangement of perusing materials of exclusive requirements keeping in view the prerequisites of the understudies not having the advantages of educators.
Therefore in 1982, the UGC indicated out the need set up a national University. While the Central Govt. pondered over the issue, the Govt. of Andhra Pradesh named in 1982 a specialist board of trustees to think about the issue, and around the same time the principal Indian Open University, the Andhra Pradesh Open University, at Hyderabad was built up. It was in this manner re-assigned as the Dr. B.R. Ambedkar Open University (BRAOU). The empowering beginning of the Andhra Pradesh Open University gave a force to having an Open Learning system for the nation. It prompted the establishment to the Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) at New Delhi in 1985. In this manner, other Open Universities were built up in the conditions of Bihar (1987), Rajasthan (1987), Maharastra (1989), Madhya Pradesh (1992), Gujrat (1994), Karnataka (1996), West Bengal (1997), Uttar Pradesh (1999), Tamilnadu (2002), Chhattisgarh (2005), Uttaranchal (2006) and Assam (2006)
Table-1.2 Open Universities in India
Thus with the establishment of Correspondence Course Institutes and Open Universities, India has grown both in magnitude and direction of ODL system. At present there are 13 State Open Universities and 1 National Open University, and more than 180 Correspondence Institutes/ Directorates of Distance Education attached to the conventional Universities. It has been reported in 2009-10, the University system alone provided instructions through ODL system to nearly 744 students at various levels of higher education. It implies nearly 23% of the total enrollment in the universities is accounted by distance education.
1.5. Challenging dimensions of ODL system to the the-then learning system
Higher education possesses a noteworthy position in education system of a country. It remains at the peak of the whole educational system and impacts every single other dimension. In India, a critical increment in the quantity of schools and colleges has been found during the most recent five decades and Indian higher education involves the second biggest system of higher education on the planet after America. It involves 506 colleges, 33 organizations of national significance, 5 foundations set up under State Legislature Act, and 31, 324 universities.
Regardless of being one of the biggest systems of higher education, it has neglected to ensure the understudies' openness to higher education according to the need. In the ongoing past, the interest for higher education has expanded colossally all through the nation in light of huge mindfulness. Be that as it may, the system of higher education neglects to oblige this regularly expanding interest. Disregarding a noteworthy quantitative extension, India lingers behind created countries and furthermore a portion of the creating countries as to access to higher education. The enrolment proportion in higher education in created nations like Canada is about 100%, USA (80%), France (half) and UK (30%). Even the enrolment rate in creating nations like Egypt is 20%, Thailand 20%, Mexico 16%, Brazil 11%, and Turkey 10%, India falls a long ways behind every one of them. It is evaluated that lone 7 percent (146.25 lakhs) of the age gathering got higher education.
The image is very dreary as the accessible educational open doors at the higher education stage are not available to numerous understudies particularly having a place with gatherings who are impeded on account of different geological, social, social, financial, and etymological or sexual orientation limitations. Survey the expanding request of higher education, Indian higher education needs a genuine make over? ODL furnishes a reasonable elective mode with the target to make education to the entryway strides of the student, upgrading social value, and making adaptability for long lasting learning. Rathore expressed that distance education as correspondence education began with the accompanying objectives:
To provide an efficient and less expensive method of educational instruction at higher education level in the context of national development in India,
To provide facilities to pursue higher education to all qualified and willing persons who have failed to join regular university courses due to personal and economic reasons or because of their inability to get admission to a regular college, and
To provide opportunities of academic pursuits to educate citizens to improve their standard of knowledge and learning through correspondence instruction without disturbing their present employment.
ODL system is being received all through the world as a significant apparatus to guarantee access, value, and quality in the field of education. In this system, the understudies are allowed to learn at their very own pace and accommodation while being far from the organization. This system appeared with the fundamental goal to give more extensive access to higher education as the traditional system was demonstrating to be unfit to adapt to the regularly expanding interest. ODL as of late has in this manner raised as an elective mode for higher education everywhere throughout the world particularly in creating nation like India. Directly, there are in excess of 13 open colleges and 200 different foundations granting distance education in India.
ODL system has altered the present method of education. The developing populace of a nation requests a system of education which can carry learning to the entryway step, with the goal that the level of the populace living in the remote territories, working in the workplaces, and engaged with business and horticulture might be profited. The ladies can likewise exploit this system notwithstanding when they are having a household existence. So, the level of the populace which can't be profited by the traditional educational system can be profited by the ODL system.
The ODL system of education is another marvel which enables individuals in accomplishing higher education with no custom of going to normal classes to like that in the traditional educational system. The University which grants distance learning can be considered as 'University without dividers or visitor'. Then again customary Universities are alluded to as 'Colleges inside the dividers'. The formal customary kind of education has made various hindrances which suspend those individuals from taking education who can't stand to come to schools, schools, and colleges on account of different requirements.
In such conditions, the ODL system advances to safeguard these people groups. The expanding prevalence of ODL system in abroad and in India is steady of the way that this system has helped individuals in accomplishing learning and aptitudes towards accomplishing intentional objective of life. It gives another opportunity to the individuals who were forgotten or dropouts of formal education system. The deficiency of conventional system of education to adapt to the consistently expanding boondocks of learning prompted the rise of distance education everywhere throughout the world with setting up of various Center for Correspondence Institutions (CCIs) and Open Universities. In this setting Srivastava (2006), expressed that the distance education system of India has been one of the quickest developing educational systems on the planet.
The ODL system jars challenge at that point learning system because of its reasonability, adaptability, cost-adequacy, and forward-looking frame of mind. It could make education to the entryway strides of penniless students. During the most recent decades, the ODL system in view of its utility, high profitability, more prominent adaptability in the plans of studies and examination, cost viability and imaginative methodology has picked up notoriety over the customary system of education. The cost viability may be called as the 'Theory of the universe's origin' of Distance education. The projects offered by ODL system are available for all students independent of their area, age and formal capability. Students can pick their very own blend of subjects and complete the courses at their own pace and places. In the creating nation like India, by far most of the general population lives in rustic regions and are to a great extent engrossed with the battle for survival including the requirement for fundamental abilities, professional aptitudes, wellbeing, social and community education.
The solid mixed media office of ODL system could make this gathering of natives increasingly useful and profitable in their work as housewives, cooks, ranchers, brokers, instructors, specialists, medical caretakers, and so on. These could assist us with building a more advantageous, more joyful, increasingly steady and educated, better refined, and confident populace opined that with its even versatility, distance education rises above the boundaries of time, space, sex, belief, network, and religion by breaking the legend of elitism in regular higher education.