The Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) is set to sign an MoU with telecom major Ericsson this week to launch the Certificate in IT management course using cellphones in pursuit of the Mobile Education’s pilot project to relay education to remote area learners. A deal is also in the works to provide low cost phones to students, starting first with teachers, at IGNOU study centres.

“We will roll out the pilot project with the Certificate Course in IT for which we have some thousand learners across the country- many in remote areas. At first we will start with sms alerts — for example sms students about a particular educational programme related to their discipline that may be broadcast on Doordarshan’ Gyan Darshan two days later at a certain time. Students often miss these highly informative lectures just because they never find out about them. We will also hold online tests using phones and check our drop put rates by individually reminding students through messages on cell phones about re-appearing for an online test they may have failed earlier- another big problem we face”, Prof K R Srivasthan, Pro VC IGNOU explained. Srivasthan was the first Director of the Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management , Kerala and is closely associated with the programme.

IGNOU’s ambitions, however, go beyond mere sms alerts. Lectures via video conferencing and web camera based counseling session for distance education using 3G mobile sets also are in the offing. “We are working closely with Ericsson’s technology team besides BSNL to roll out 3G-based education programmes to work on content that can be downloaded in packages by students”. Prof Srivasthan added.

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