Apart from the live component, there will also be a provision for the colleges to record the lectures, and access them at a later date, to avoid the inconvenience of coordinating schedules. “This can be done when there is a computer at the receiving end, and hence broadband technology will be used in some cases. As required we will also use the Edusat network,” said Kale.

For this purpose, the optic-fibre enabled local area network (LAN) installed on the UoP campus will be linked to the LAN of other colleges to yield a wide area network (WAN), which will then be used for all kinds of communication. Once such a network is established, it can be used for other purposes, like administrative communication. “Many of the colleges have to send to the university detailed administrative reports of the students admitted, fees, examination details and so on. The network will speed up this process,” said Kale.

Moreover, the infrastructure created as part of the digital universities initiative of the MKCL will also be used. This technology enables a wide range of administrative procedures to be digitised, including course enquiry, applications, admissions, and so on.

“While most of the needed infrastructure is already in place and being used to a smaller extent, there will now be a large scale convergence of all these existing technologies, which will be applied to the 408 colleges,” explained Kale.

Stresses Jadhav, “As a result of this, greater synchronisation and standardisation can be achieved in administrative procedures across colleges, and governance will improve tremendously.”

... contd.