JU introduces new distance education programmes

School of Education Technology (SET), Jadavpur University (JU), today launched its first 'multimodal digital distance education (MDDE) programme', in partnership with CMC Ltd and Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (CDAC).

Asok Nath Basu, vice-chancellor of JU, said MDDE was a pilot project and the first of its kind in the country. "The two conventional mode of courses are face-to-face or correspondence. MDDE is a pioneering course, which would be an integration of several modes," Basu added.

Inaugurating the course today, Satyasadhan Chakraborty, minister of higher education, government of West Bengal, acclaimed JU's pioneering role in applying information technology (IT) in disseminating knowledge at all levels.

SET would be currently offering two courses under the MDDE programme "" Post Graduate Diploma in Multimedia and Web Technology (PGDMWT) and M Tech IT (Courseware Engineering).

The total number of seats allotted for the courses would be 180 and 50 respectively. The mode of dissemination would consist of instruction material in printed form, audio synchronised lecture in interactive compact disc format, video conferencing, lab and project work at the work centre and workshop.

CDAC and CMC, the distance education partners, would provide infrastructure as well as training to the students as per the guidelines set by Jadavpur University, informed Saibal Ghosh, vice-president, CMC Limited.

Kalyankumar Datta, director, SET, further informed that most of the students would be allocated to the programme partners.

"Partners will take up 40 students for the MTech IT course and 160 students for PGDMWT course and they will retain fifty per cent of the course fees. The rest shall go to the university," said Datta.

The fees for each semester has been set at Rs 12,000. MDDE has been an outcome of the initial funding provided by ministry of communication and information technology (MCIT), government of India to JU for research and development of MDDE in IT and other critical technologies for starting IT enabled distance education for technical education in the post-graduate level in 2002.

SET was also planning to launch master of engineering (ME) in software engineering under MDDE programme, he added.