Kamala Kanta Dash, BeyondHeadlines
IGNOU’s ‘Beyond Classroom’ model has been globally recognised. For this approach IGNOU has recently won an award for the ‘Best Teaching Practices’ at the India Today Aspire Education Summit 2012, held in New Delhi. The Indira Gandhi National Open University popularly known as IGNOU is the world’s largest university having more than 4 million students worldwide. Internationally, the university operates in more than 35 countries of the world through its partner institutions. IGNOU materials are known for their conceptual clarity and higher quality of research. In India, these materials are extremely popular for students preparing for civil services and other competitive exams.
IGNOU, a national open university of India was started in 1985 with 4,528 students. The university as per the recent updated data, serves the educational aspirations of over 4 million students in India and other countries through 21 Schools of Studies and a network of 67 regional centres, around 3,000 learner support centres and 67 overseas centres. The University offers about 490 certificate, diploma, degree and doctoral programmes, with strength of nearly 420 faculty members and academic staff at the headquarters and regional centres and about 36,000 academic counselors from conventional institutions of higher learning, professional organisations, and industry among others.
In last two-decades it has achieved a global reputation of imparting quality education. The credit of this award must go to the successive University administration, innovative faculty members and a large chain of study centres who work in great coordination throughout the year to provide education at an affordable cost to everyone. In the meantime IGNOU is expanding its international network by tie-ups with leading global universities. The Vice Chancellor, Prof M. Aslam has recently informed the media regarding the Universities of Berkley and Maryland in the United States having shown interest in ‘faculty exchange programmes’.
IGNOU shared this award with a prestigious business school, Indian School of Business (ISB), Hyderabad for creating and customizing learning experiences beyond the four walls of class room. Beyond Headlines strongly believes that experiences “Beyond Classroom” have a great role in shaping our personality, philosophy of life and our overall contribution to the society.
Mr. Dash is currently the Honorary Editor at BH.
