It looks like an idea which will click. In sync with the learning needs of web-savvy students, Delhi University is set to supplement classroom teaching with e-learning in the next academic session.
Lessons for first year students in 10 popular subjects will be uploaded on the website www.du.ac.in. "We've enhanced value to the text by adding pictures, addressing common misconceptions and providing questions," says Professor AK Bakshi, director, Institute of Life Long Learning (ILLL). "The idea is to encourage analytical thinking."
Net Gains
- DU is the first university to supplement classroom teaching with e-learning
- Video Snippest flash animation, simulation of experiments and graphs will be part of online syllabi
Launched with an initial budget of Rs 1 crore, the project has 300 teachers from various DU colleges working on it. Papers are being prepared in Life Science, Physics, Chemistry , Math, English, Commerce, Hindi, History Economics , and Electronics.
To make syllabi interesting, apart from text, online content will include live examples (java applets for simulation of experiment), flash animation, video snippets and links to related web pages.
A chapter on storytelling for BA students, for instance, talks about the language and vocabulary used by Salman Rushdie in Haroon and the Sea of Stories. "Besides the text, I've put in pictures of the author with links to his biographies and an interview on YouTube," says Sukrita Kumar, reader in English at Zakir Hussain College, on deputation with ILLL.
Mathematical problems are accompanied by illustrations from everyday life. "The paper on Mathematical Awareness is for non-math students. So we've peppered it with a history of famous mathematicians and the subject's applications in nature and life," says Geeta Venkataraman of St. Stephen's.
Besides being uploaded on the site, the content will also be distributed in the printed format.
Source: HT, 16/05/2008
