Lecture delivered on 5 Nov 2013.

1. Commonwealth Educational
Media Centre for Asia
Status and Trends of Educational Media
in India: Allusion to Dr Bhupen
Hazarika, a pioneer in Educational
Media Research
Sanjaya Mishra
Director, Commonwealth Educational Media Centre for Asia
November 5, 2013, Guwahati, Assam

2. Dr. Bhupen Hazarika



Padma Vibhusan Dr.
Bhupen Hazarika -- the
illustrious son of the soil
Dr.Hazarika’s music is
eternal and connects
with the people
Doctoral work on
Educational Technology
in 1952 from Teachers
College, Columbia
University
Photo Credit: Wikipedia/User:Ubphotos

3. Some ideas in his Doctoral work






Education is necessary for a strong and vibrant
democracy;
Education should help everyone, including farmers,
labourers, weavers, parents, and tribal population of
India;
Education should foster rational inquisitiveness of human
beings;
Visual symbols play significant role in the society,
especially in the democratic process;
In order to improve basic social education, audio-visual
methods play a significant role;
Basic teacher training courses should include
competencies of audio-visual methods of teaching;

4. Some ideas in his Doctoral work





Adult illiteracy is a major problem for overall development of
the country;
One-world thought can be imparted through use of audiovisual media, as they have the power to transfer thoughts
without change and even illiterates can understand them;
To achieve the goal of world citizenship we bring the world to
the community, and radio can play a significant role in this;
The process of measurement of community behaviour is best
carried on by the adult members of the village, and
therefore, to educate adults group experiences must be used
for social informal education;
Audio-visual materials produced by the United Nations and
UNESCO be used by adult educators for a better
understanding of the basic unity in diversity, and strengthen
democracy.

5. Commonwealth of Learning



Commonwealth of
Learning -- established in
1987
Helps developing nations
improve access to quality
education and training
CEMCA serves as a
regional unit of COL for
the Commonwealth Asia

6. Overview of my Presentation
 Higher education in India
 Use of Open and Distance Learning
 Technology in education
 Problems of educational media use
 Emerging developments on use of ICT in
education

7. Higher Education in India
 Gross Enrolment Rate: 18.8%
 20.3 millions students in higher



education
Increasing demands of higher
education – need for more
universities (NKC report)
Highly dependent on
Government support
Need to rethink access to
higher education in terms of
cost and quality

8. Educational Technology
Developments
 Early examples include the Delhi School TV




project and Satellite Instructional Television
Experiment
Gap in policy and practice
ET has been grossly underutilized
Distribution of technology tools to schools did
not yield desired results
Computer Literacy and Studies (CLASS)
project had modest success

9. Educational Technology
Developments
 UGC Country-wide Classroom (1984)
 IGNOU (1985) – extensive use of audio and



video for education
Interactive TV (one-way video and two-way
audio) in 1993
EDUSAT in 2004 with capability for two-way
audio and video
Virtual Campus Initiative in 1998

10. Government Support for Educational
Technology





Govt of India IT
Taskforce (1998)
NPTEL (2007)
NMEICT (2009)
ICT@Schools (2013)
NROER (2013)

11. Problems of Technology Integration
in Education
 Understanding the affordances of technology
 No Significant Difference
 Cultural bias towards face-to-face education
 Understanding the potentials of ODL to

increase access with quality and low cost
Appreciation of ‘learning’ as constant and
‘time’ as variable in education system

12. Emerging Technologies and
Possibilities
 eLearning opportunities
 Massive Open Online Courses



(MOOCs)
Open Educational Resources
(OERs)
Separation of Certification
from learning opportunities
(e.g. OERU)
World OER Congress and OER
Policy

13. Improving Quality: Dr. Hazarika’s
Criteria
 Does it appeal to reason?
 Is it scientifically sound?
 Is it recent?
 Is the content substantial?
 Is it adaptable? – this one is
highly significant in today’s
digital technologies

14. Making Dr. Hazarika Vision Real
 Creating educational resources in digital

media that can be easily adopted and
contextualized – release all educational
materials as OER
Use educational media to strengthen
democracy – use the power of MOOCs to
create ‘learning society’

15. Thank You