Dr.Ravi K Mahajan invited to attend UNESCO Regional Conference on Quality Assurance in Higher Education in Shenzhen
Author(s): City Air NewsDr.Ravi K Mahajan, Professor in the University School of Open Learning(USOL). CHANDIGARH, MAY 24, 2017: Dr.Ravi K Mahajan, Professor in the University School of Open Learning(USOL), has been invited to attend the...
CHANDIGARH, MAY 24, 2017: Dr.Ravi K Mahajan, Professor in the University School of Open Learning(USOL), has been invited to attend the UNESCO Regional Conference on Quality Assurance in Higher Education, from 15-16 Jun 2017 in Shenzhen, China. Professor Mahajan will be amongst a few selected delegates from Asian region representing International Council of Open & Distance Education (ICDE, Norway) at the Shenzhen. He is invited to attend this conference due to his numerous publications and presentations on Open & Distance Education.
The aim of the Regional Conference on Quality Assurance is to inform and shape the 2018 global conference on quality assurance in higher education organized by UNESCO.
In particular, the aim is to map the status, needs, innovative practices and challenges related to quality assurance in higher education in the Asia-Pacific region.
Having an experience of about four decades as distance educator, Professor Mahajan will share his thought process on quality assurance in non-traditional modes of learning, e.g., MOOCs, blended learning, etc. While blending statistical exigencies in the higher education, he will assert that Open & Distance Education is a way out to ensure quality education at the higher level. According to him, the present age educational buzzword MOOC, the Massive Open Online Course, glamorized is an extension of Distance Education system facilitating education system towards `Openness’.
Notably, 25 years back, in March 1992, Professor Mahajan had demonstrated at IIT Kanur the harnessing of computers as a teaching-learning tool. It was a time when Google or user friendly Content Management Systems like Moodle or A Tutor, where nowhere on sight. He had developed a self learning module by programming in dBase on a topic `Statistics: An Introduction’ and compared the teaching –learning environment with that through educational film on the same topic. Later, when the National Mission on EICT was launched, in 2010; in first such venture, he successfully experimented in giving online learning experience and online study material to the students in Diploma in Statistics.