Thursday, December 16, 2010

Your Suggstions to Improve Academic Counselling

IGNOU provides academic counselling to all learners in their respective study centres. Counselling sessions are one of the important components of the teaching learning process. Counsellors of your course provides information on the course, advises you on the content, helps you in learning and other functions. It also provides peer to peer interactions so that you solve your problems related to the course.
We want to understand more about the counselling sessions of your course. Post your suggestions/comments on the strengths and weaknesses of these sessions.

Saturday, January 23, 2010

Why Measure Student Satisfaction?

Student satisfaction studies can be justified from several in the Indian Content. Education is a social sector with public funding. Public expenditure needs to be justified because public pays for it through direct and indirect taxes. In the present age, the tax payers are becoming conscious about the value and utility of their money.

Secondly, government has to justify its allocation to education in preference over and/or comparison to other service sectors like health, agriculture etc.

Thirdly, student satisfaction studies are important in open universities as students enrolled in this system pay for their education. Formal system has high public cost and insignificant private cost compared to low or no public cost in open and distance education and high or exclusive private cost. Hence open universities are obliged to respond to student satisfaction.

Fourthly, the government and universities must know how well they are doing with respect to education. Studies of student satisfaction can provide important clue to the system performance.

Fifthly, the attrition or drop out rate in open and distance education is high all over the globe, IGNOU is no exception. Dissatisfaction is an important reason for student drop out. Studies show that more satisfied the students more is the completion rate. Such studies at regular intervals can significantly alter the drop out scenario.

Introduction

IGNOU will be celebrating its Silver Jubilee year on 19th November 2009. The aim of the university is to provide cost effective quality education to large section of our population including those living in the far and remote areas of the country.

In the last 25 years the university has grown. It offers 183 programmes, to a cumulative student population of over 2.0 million. This makes IGNOU the largest single university in terms of numbers in the world. The programmes are offered at various levels from Doctorate to Post Graduate, Graduate, Diploma and Certificate. The university has a network of more than 60 Regional centers, 2100 study centers, and 52 overseas study centers to provide support services to the learners.