Explain the role of technology in achieving open and distance education
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Answer:
Distance education was started to revolutionaries the concept of higher education throughout the world and was considered as an attractive mode to democratize higher education. Distance education has emerged to be a popular non-formal channel to provide answer to equity, access, flexibility and cost-effectiveness. The first clear statement on distance education was made in the Report of the Education Commission (1964-66) where it is mentioned, “There must also be a method of taking education to the mill ions who depend upon their own effort to study whenever they have time to do so. We consider that correspondence or home-study courses provide the right answer for these situations.”
The Education Commission further stated, “It is obvious that these universities should not be the only agencies which should organize correspondence courses. Provision of correspondence courses should also be one important function of the extension service of developmental departments of government such as agriculture, industries and health. This should prove to be a valuable method of conveying to the educated and the neo-l iterate al like such knowledge and improved techniques as the departments concerned will to put across.“
The recommendation of the Education Commission was incorporated in the National Policy of Education ( 1986) that “……Part time educational and correspondence courses should be developed on a large scale at the university stage. Such facilities should also be developed for secondary school students, for teachers and for agricultural individual and other workers. Education through part time and correspondence courses should be given same status as full time education. Such facilities will bring smooth transition from school to work, promote the cause of education and provide opportunities to a large number of people who have the desires to educate themselves further but cannot do so on a full time basis.”
Moore ( 1972) gives more clear definition of distance education “The family of instructional methods in which the teaching behaviors are executed apart from the learning behaviors … so that communication between the learner and the teacher must be facilitated by print, electronic, popular and mechanical, or other devices.” Thus, the term flexible and open, distance education seems to be more appropriate because it is “arrangement to enable people to learn at the time, place and space which satisfies their circumstances and requirements.”