Quality Assurance Toolkit for Open and Distance Learning (ODL) Institutions

Abstract

Education is one of the primary needs of human being. All over the world, greater emphasis is being placed on its spread so that a large section of population can have access to it. e growth in infrastructure and other facilities for formal section of higher education has not been able to keep pace with the persistent growth in global population. Consequently, the concept of Open & Distance Learning (ODL) institution has come to the fore in the past few decades. // It is catering to those sections of population who could not have access to classroom education or have been dropouts from the formal system or working executives. It is a generally accepted fact that the modern distance education with use of technology started in 1969 with the establishment of Open University of UK (OUUK) ( Jung et al, 2013). In Asia, Korean Open University started in 1972. In India, the rst Open University was started in Andhra Pradesh in the year 1982. A few years later Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) was set up in New Delhi in 1985. With the proliferation of IT tools & techniques in the 80's & 90's, the design and delivery of distance education services has been reengineered.