A tribal student sitting at his or her classroom of the Malkangiri College may now be able to receive lessons from top-notch technical institutions like IIT without any hassles.
The Department of Higher Education (DoHE) has started consultations with the IIT Mumbai and IIT Kharagpur to start Virtual Classrooms (VCRs) in at least 60 colleges of the State.
Sources said DoHE Principal Secretary GK Dhal is in touch with both the top technological institutions for such an innovative initiative. The move is part of the modernisation programme undertaken by the State Government, for which it is planned to digitise the campus with the help of information technology (IT).
Teaching would be available through videoconferencing and online video chat through the Skype Solutions. This would not only help the students broaden their horizons but also ease the pressure on the Government, which is facing teachers’ crunch. At least 800 posts of teachers are lying vacant in the Government-run colleges as on date, though the Government has started a recruitment process.
Virtual Classrooms are planned in at least two leading colleges of each of the State’s 30 districts, each one from a Government and the other from a leading private college.
This would help all the 60 colleges receive lessons by one teacher from institutions like IIT on any of the science subjects by the students, said a senior officer in the Department of Higher Education. Subjects like Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics, Botany and Zoology would be taught in the virtual classes, he informed.
Apart from the IITs, the DoHE is also in touch with the Asian universities of Japan, South Korea and Singapore to scale up its move to modernise the classrooms of the institutions of higher educations.
With Israel leading in higher education in the agriculture sector, the DoHE is keen to have a tie-up with the University of Israel, said sources.
DoHE officials have already held talks with the representatives of South Korea, and soon a team of professors would be visiting the State as the university authorities have expressed keenness for joining hands with the DoHE for a campus in the State, said the sources. Chief of Performance Tracking Cell in DoHE Mihir Das is coordinating such an ICT initiative, added the sources.