UNIVERSITY TODAY

New Delhi; Vol XXV, No 21 1 NOVEMBER 2005

School of Open Learning of DU: An Academic Slum

By
V P Jain
With the growing aspirations for tertiary education in a fast growing metropolis
like Delhi, the demand for both undergraduate and post graduate courses in Delhi
University has been rising over the years. With 14 Faculties, 85 Departments and 82
colleges, the University of Delhi has an enrolment of over two and a half lac students.
However, regular colleges admit only about 40,000 students each year, leaving out twice
as many disappointed. This residual is pushed to what is, euphemistically, called the non-
formal stream, the School of Correspondence Courses (renamed as the School of Open
Learning) admitting the bulk of them. It would be worthwhile to ponder over their fate.

Campus of Open Learning — The New Education Paradigm

It is an irony, that while the late-comers in the field of distance education have
graduated into faculties and universities, the School which was a pioneering institution of
its kind, has been languishing for want of adequate institutional support. With swarms of
students, and no worthwhile academic package and virtually no facilities, the institution
has earned the dubious distinction of being termed as an ‘academic slum’.

Prof. Deepak Nayyar, when he took over as the new VC, proposed modifications
in the structure approved earlier to revamp the dilapidated system. He re-opened the issue
by circulating a white paper entitled “Towards Operationalising the Campus of Open
Learning”, which was accepted by the AC and the EC. Endorsing the basic philosophy,
however, he observed, “As of now, almost two thirds of the students enrolled are through
the non-formal stream. While the regular colleges admit about 50,000 school leaving
students each year, as many as 75,000 join the non-formal stream. Instituting quality
assurance mechanisms in the non-formal stream is therefore of great social significance.
It is in this context that we must see the recent initiative of creating a full fledged Campus
of Learning, envisioned within multi-campus frame work. The Campus of Learning
should be viewed as the third campus of the university, so that it develops into a full
fledged constituent unit in the manner in which the South Campus developed in the
1970’s. With the recent initiative of DU, to introduce broadband networking and internet
connectivity, it has now become possible for us to explore ways in which technology can
be used to make education available to a large number of students while enhancing its
quality.”

The basic philosophy and the concern outlined in the white paper is, surprisingly,
only a reiteration of the underpinnings of the structure approved by the visitor earlier.
Then the pertinent question that arises is why this exercise all over again? The only
contentious issue appeared to be the rather peripheral issue of the transfer of the teachers
from school of correspondence courses (SCC) to the department of distance and
continuing education (DDCE). Both the structures approved by the visitor and the one
recommended in the white paper conceptualizes COL as the third campus of the
university. It is only being naive to point out (white paper) that the interfaces between
COL, Faculty of Open Learning and DDCE had not been worked out by the committees
set up earlier in this regard. These linkages, it must be understood clearly, would be the
same as for the North and the South Campus and are well codified in the university
calendar.

The Campus was to provide an open platform for shared academic activities,
integrating all the departments and colleges into a faculty network. The COL was
structured to involve the seven thousand strong teaching faculty in the university as a
networked collectivity as ’resource-pool’, embedded in the virtual campus. The rationale
for the conversion of SCC into COL was precisely to entrust the task of teaching two lac
distance education students to this collectivity, interfaced through the study centers (like
the Non-Collegiate Women’s Education Board, for example). Since the task had become
too unwieldy to be handled by a college level, stand-alone institution like SCC, which
had be wound up, paving the way for its metamorphosis into COL. COL, equipped with
broad-band network as e-learning platform, faculty pool comprising all the teachers in the
colleges and the departments to address the concerns of the students in study centers, and
also to prepare the distance mode learning material in the newly created open learning
development centre (OLDC), and the faculty in the DDCE to train and collaborate with
the existing faculty in the university and to organize courses for the prospective
candidates in distance education pedagogy, would have been a vision realized. The
administrative staff of SCC, transferred to COL would have constituted the administrative
wing of the campus, like the North and the South campus.

The university appointed director COL in the year 2002 and an OSD of the
School of correspondence courses in 2003, to give shape and disseminate the new
education paradigm. It is an irony that the exercise has only become a sordid tale of
missed opportunities, and understandably so. The officers assigned leadership roles had
neither the vision nor the perspective, and most of all, had no grounding in distance
education technology. It is not surprising that they totally failed to capitalize on the
broad-band network facility to launch the crucial e-learning platform for distance
education in the university. The ’expression profile’ of the campus, a new education
paradigm remains elusive. The physical and organizational entity, the Campus of Open
Learning, as the third campus of the university, like the North and the South Campus, is
nowhere in sight. Both OLDC and DDCE remain dormant and non-functional.
Meanwhile, the VC left, completing his five year term, further compounding the mess by
only rechristening SCC as SOL, betraying a total lack of understanding of the
underpinnings of the restructured model approved by the visitor earlier, leaving the field
wide open for his successor, as usual, to ‘re-invent the wheel’.
 Vanishing Faculty-support

As per the UGC norms, every teacher in the university is required to work for 40 hours a
week of which 22 hours must be devoted to active teaching in the institution. A college
teacher takes 18 periods of 55 minutes duration each per week. In addition, he is also
required to give 3 contact hours per week to students for counseling. A teacher also
corrects, on an average, 100 tutorial assignments per week. Moreover, the teachers in the
colleges devote considerable time and energy to various extra-curricular activities. In
sharp contrast to this, the teachers of the School, virtually, have no work. Distance
education students, who are not required to come to the campus, need access to academic
advising services. Faculty members in all distance education institutions, typically
observe office hours, during which time they deal with questions and concerns of
individual students. The counselor is a vital figure in the institution of distance learning to
stimulate the foundation of self help groups: students often get stuck because they come
across a conceptual difficulty, for instance, and could not, without a face-to-face tutorial,
(should be done on-line in virtual mode) get themselves going again. It is imperative to
assign students to specific tutors, the general idea being that the student will stay with the
same counselor throughout the course.

As per the recommendation of the Academic Reforms Committee, every teacher

must be physically present in a college for at least five hours on all working days, which
includes contact hours for student counseling. The same work norms apply to the teachers
in the school also, albeit with a considerable more weight given to student counseling, for
which every teacher has been provided with a well furnished separate room in the school.
And yet, ironically, the faculty-support system of counseling, (the primary job of the
faculty in the School) which has been eroding over the years, has been completely done
away with from the academic session 2003-04. For the fifth successive year (2007-08),
the academic schedule of the teaching faculty has neither been prepared nor notified to
the students, till date. Every college in the university prepares and implements the
teaching schedule from the first working day of the new session, ie 16 July every year, as
per the directions of the Academic Council (on the basis of the recommendation of the
Academic Reforms Committee). The Staff Council of the School has also not been
convened, for the third year in succession, to constitute the mandatory Academic
Supervisory Committee to monitor all academic programs in the School. The current
academic session started, as usual, on 16 July 2005, and all the colleges started the new
session with great fanfare, as reported in the media. The SOL, however, remained closed,
as usual, Saturday still being observed a non-teaching day despite the university directive
to adhere to a 6-day teaching week. The VC and his ‘team’ members were apprised of the
situation in writing, but they did nothing, their pretensions for implementing academic
reforms and accountability, notwithstanding.

The other student support system, namely, the student response sheet (SRS feed-
back mechanism), integral to method of instruction, has virtually ceased to exist, and no
attempt has been made to revive it. The MC of the school had constituted a fact finding
committee to go into the malfunctioning of the institution which has observed: “First
thing the committee noted that the involvement of teachers in (SRS) Students Response
Sheet work has been done away with. The committee noted that “a minimum of SRS per
week must be corrected by the teachers of the school and this must be considered as their
basic task while determining the staff strength." The involvement of teachers in the
preparation of the study material is revealing: as regards writing new lessons, the average
per teacher per year comes to 1.3 new lessons per year which is equivalent to two weeks
of work. As regards the old lessons edited or revised, it works out to be, on an average, 4
lessons per teacher per year, equivalent to anther two weeks of work.

The fact finding committee tried to scrutinize the historical record of the creation
of teaching posts and whether "the staff council or the MC made any such exercise of
calculating workload for the creation of new posts or even justifying the filling up of the
vacant posts. This effort of the committee also resulted in dismay and disappointment."
The primary objective of SCC renamed as SOL (ordinance XX(8)), “is to serve as an
institution of distance education and open learning” and “to organize teaching through the
distance mode.” Instead, the entire academic format of sending the study material at
regular intervals, followed sequentially by counseling (PCP) and SRS has been derailed,
defeating the very purpose of distance education based on participatory and
individualized mode of learning. In its place has emerged a grotesque system of
‘coaching classes’ under the guise of PCP. These ‘coaching classes’ are essentially
organized on week-ends and is paid work even for the school faculty as an extra source of
remuneration, and it is not surprising that, over the years, the component of these
coaching classes, as a proportion, has been steadily going up, at the cost of counseling
and SRS which are central to distance mode. The fact finding committee has taken a
serious view of this development." The participation of teachers in PCP is highly skewed,
a pointer to either mal- distribution or grabbing by some teachers or lack of any
monitoring system". The fact finding committee has taken strong exception to the system
of overtime payment for PCP work to both the teaching faculty and the non-teaching staff
which amounts to several lakhs of rupees, as over time payment, every year with the
active connivance of the MC. The school collects PCP fee from every student (even
though the participation in PCP is optional), over and above the tuition fee, which means
that the PCP is not part of the teaching module (tuition) of the school. However, if it is
considered critical to the success of students (like the summer schools in British Open
University) attendance should be mandatory.

With the abolition of SRS (feed-back mechanism to monitor student progress) and
counseling, teachers have virtually, no work on week-days and have no motivation to
attend the School. Absenteeism being rampant the teachers have no regular schedule or
office hours to observe and many of them do not bother to come to the School for
months. What is shocking is that the system has been allowed to crumble by the active
connivance of the MC and the University authorities. The fact finding committee
observed, “It was a disappointing experience of the committee because neither it could
have any access to such records nor teachers and other functionaries in the school which
showed any enthusiasm as to the adherence of the norms of workload.” “In precise term,
one notices a situation of system erosion where governance and accountability tended to
be increasingly virtual instead of being real.”
 The study material, which is central to distance education pedagogy, also
continues to be prepared in the old fashioned non- interactive mode and not in self-
instructional mode as has been emphasized time and again. In any case the dispatch of
study material is taken very casually, as no time schedule is adhered to. In case of several
courses, the study material is simply not available. Consequently, all kinds of pavement
book shops have mushroomed around the School premises, doing a brisk business selling
‘champion guides’, a euphemism for ‘kunjis’ , to fill the gap. It is unbelievable that, until
a few months back, the School, an institution of distance learning, did not have a website
of its own. A committee had been constituted to create a web-site for the school which
has taken more than two years for a task which could be accomplished in a few hours
time by outsourcing a professional. Even now the web site in not interactive, and
thousands of queries from the students received everyday, in the sub-domain of the
university computer centre, remain unanswered.

Department of Distance Education

The university operationalised the Department of Distance Education by appointing an

OSD of the Department three years ago. However, the department ceased to be operative
without assigning any reason. The teaching faculty of SCC, with four decades of
experience of teaching through distance mode, was to be absorbed in the department of
distance education (Chandrashekher Rao Committee report) to achieve the objective. The
former VC, Prof Deepak Nayyar refused to implement the faculty transfer, for reasons
best known to him. The UGC has not sanctioned any new post for the department in view
of the stipulation to transfer the school teaching faculty to the department.
It must be emphasized that distance education has its own distinctive pedagogy,
and its own philosophy. The school was to be wound up, transferring the teaching faculty,
equipped with four decades of experience of teaching through distance education mode,
to the DDCE, not to continue to teach the same courses, as in SCC, as misconstrued, but,
as members of the new department, to address the larger issue of developing and
disseminating distance education pedagogy by assuming leadership role. It is shocking
that the Department of Distance Education, which is to play a pivotal role in furthering
core competence in the area of distance education in the university, be put in a limbo in
this fashion. The Department is expected to offer academic programs leading to
Certificates, Diplomas and Degrees in distance education pedagogy exactly in the same
manner as the department of education offers courses in formal education pedagogy. It is
also designed to develop expertise to help produce courses for delivery through the
distance education mode, and also to actively involve in research, training and extension
education activities. It should be borne in mind that the Department of Distance
Education is not an exclusive preserve of the Campus of Open Learning (as per the new
ordinance), and is well within its rights to float its courses in the formal steam also (like
the Department of Education). Similarly, all other Departments in the university (five
have already done so) are expected to go online and offer their courses online, in the
Campus of Open Learning.
 Post-Graduate Studies

The VC appointed Director, Campus of Open Learning (COL) in the year 2002. With the
appointment of the Director of the Campus of Open Learning, the third campus, as a
virtual campus is supposed to have come into existence in the university. In contrast to
the North and South Campuses, which specialise in the formal teaching mode, the Open
Campus has a specific distance learning focus. All the departments in the university
conduct post-graduate teaching, either in the North Campus, or in the South Campus, or
in both. With the new dispensation, rationality demands that the Departments offering PG
courses through distance mode and organise their programmes in the newly created e-
learning space, that is, the Campus of Open Learning. The decision to continue to use the
School as a surrogate for the Campus of Open Learning for post-graduate teaching
(where the courses taught are university level courses), is seriously flawed and has
rendered the third campus superfluous, a self-defeating exercise.

Examination

The students of the school have the dubious distinction of having the highest failure rate.
Another serious problems with the examination of the students of the School is the
inordinate delay in the evaluation of the scripts and declaration of the results. Last year,
the university introduced a system of ’internal evaluation’ as part of the examination
reforms. However, the system has not been extended to the students of the School, for
reasons best known to the university (ordinance VIII E) and, ironically, the Director COL
being a party to the decision. It is a matter of serious concern that the students of the
school have been kept out of the ambit of the scheme of internal evaluation who need
continuous monitoring more than the privileged students in the regular stream. Moreover,
the students of the school are required to undertake written assignments (SRS) which are
marked by the tutors, and this activity which is a method of monitoring progress can also
be used as a method of assessment of performance as part of internal assessment scheme.
It is another story, of course, that the scheme has been put in the cold storage.

The most sordid tale pertains to the failure to create the much needed e-learning
platform which can make the task much easier by making assessment by tutors on-line.
The university has, however, constituted a sub-committee to look into the issue of
internal assessment which has not submitted its report till date, Consequently, the annual
examination of the students of School was held as a separate entity, called category B,
and they stand further segregated and downgraded, may be a prelude to, eventually,
awarding a separate degree. The new structure which stipulates a separate examination
cell for COL on the lines of the facility in the South Campus has not been created so far.
It is sad, that the School continues to be treated with disdain, and accorded step-motherly
treatment. For years no new course has been introduced, no new facility like the study
centres created or regional centres added. It is not surprising that the School has the
highest dropout/failure rate in the University. The university continues to pursue policies
of exclusion so far as the students of the non-formal stream are concerned. All the
reforms enacted so far, be it innovative courses, examination reforms, extra-curricular
activities, remain confined to the students of the formal sector only. The rationale for the
conversion of SCC into COL was precisely to remove these infirmities. But, obviously,
the, VC and his illustrious team, had a different agenda to implement, and is a classic
case of missed opportunities. The university keeps talking of reforms like new courses,
decentralization, distance education technology, in the manner of chanting of mantras,
only as a mock exercise, but nothing concrete has emerged by way of realization. What is
worse is that the academic reforms enacted in the university have been exclusionist and
confined to the formal stream only, thus widening the chasm between the formal sector
students and the non-formal sector students.

Conclusion

The school has totally failed in its mission to impart quality education to lakhs of students
enrolled in the nonformal stream. What is worse is its propensity to indulge in all kinds of
scandals as highlighted by the fact finding committee. Unable to persuade the authorities
to initiate corrective measures have impelled teachers to file several cases in the court of
law. Unfortunately, the responsibility of governance has been given to people of very
doubtful academic credentials with no innovative skills. Consequently, the reform process
has been severely vitiated, and not surprisingly, the various legislations enacted for
setting up COL, flawed as the are, has only deepened the crisis. Now, the new VC has
taken over the command of the university, and we sincerely hope that this will provide
the necessary window for course correction. It should be appreciated that COL, as a
virtual campus, has a distinct character and can realize its full potential only if the
officers in command measure up to the challenge by fulfilling the promise encoded in the
blueprint of the campus, to accord a fair deal to thousands of segregated and marginalised
students.

V P Jain (Retd) Department of

Economics, School of Open Learning,
University of Delhi.