Engaging teaching content is the only way out in this age of multiple distractions and social media, Prof. BJ Rao, Vice Chancellor, University of Hyderabad said here on Friday. Addressing an outreach programme of DTH Swayam Prabha, Prof. Rao called upon teachers to come forward to create content that was relevant and engaging to retain students on the screen. “Teachers will need to create crisp content that will engage students and make them future ready,” he added.
Chief Co-ordinator of DTH Swayam Prabha, Prof. Arun K. Tangirala emphasized the need to focus on the nation’s goal of expanding education using all modes of delivery and the need for alignment of Open Education Resources (OERs) to the specific requirements of the learning community in a structured manner. He also called upon teachers not to resist emerging technologies such as AI but stay ahead and teach the students of using it ethically.
Explaining the basket of initiatives taken up by Swayam Prabha, Prof. Tangirala suggested that institutions could explore the possibility of curating and promoting currently available content.
Prof. B Rajashekhar, School of Management Studies called for cohesion in policies and procedures across colleges and universities and called for increased adoption of courses and content from platforms like Swayam Prabha and Swayam etc. Finally, he suggested the need for filling the gaps in core content while emphasising on the importance of descriptive and analytical answers for maintaining quality in learning for all kinds of courses – core, skill enhancement and inter/multi-disciplinary.
Speaking on the history of NPTEL, Prof. Satyaki Roy, IIT Kanpur said it took immense effort to create courses and several number of outreach programmes to make it one of the most popular programmes. Mr. Balasubramaniam Iyer, Vice President, Jio Platforms Limited outlined the various initiatives that Jio had taken up to provide educational content on its television app.