Delhi University (DU) Portal to Enhance Learning

June 7, 2010 - PRLog -- A student’s experience of studying in Delhi University is about to change with the launch of its web portal this month. Created by the Institute of Life Long Learning (ILLL), the portal aims to make education at the university both interactive and interesting. The portal will use features like e-lectures, multimedia, animation and videos to explain concepts to students.

http://www.indiaacademic.com/universities/delhi-university.html

Explaining the rationale behind the portal, AK Bakhshi, head, ILLL, said: “The aim of Delhi University is to offer quality education to all its students. The portal will offer students an opportunity to learn various course lessons in an interesting way.” Will the portal replace classroom teaching? “The portal is a supplementary tool for both teachers and students to teach and learn in a better way,” he replies.

Bakhshi admits it is not easy to involve students. “Most of the e-content is available in both formats — word and PDF — which students find monotonous. But DU’s portal is all set to revolutionise the way e-content is delivered to students,” he adds. DU is in discussion with the ministry of human resource development (MHRD) to lead the way for other institutes in delivering e-content under the National Mission on Education through ICT.

The portal offers lessons in all disciplines — humanities, science and commerce. Every section delivers content through e-lessons, e-quizzes, e-lectures. The science section also contains e-labs. “More than a thousand DU teachers have been involved in creating the content for the portal,” Bakhshi adds.

E-LESSONS
E-lessons comprise multimedia-enriched content for every paper in a discipline at the undergraduate level. It encourages students to think critically and move away from rotelearning. The main attraction is the ‘value addition’ section. As the name suggests, it will offer additional information about a topic under the sub-heads — common misconceptions, analogies, FAQs, biographic sketches, videos, maps, Did You know, concept maps, animations, adaptations, etc. “The best feature is students can enlarge images and maps in a different page for clarity,” he explains. Students of Hindi literature can listen to Harivansh Rai Bachchan’s poem read out by Amitabh Bachchan.

E-QUIZZES
This section comprises multiple-choice questions followed by four different options. The questions will be of three difficulty levels. “The e-quiz template has a unique structure.
It goes beyond the simple question and answer format to provide students with a complete logical reasoning of the incorrect or correctanswer. The e-quizzes are expected to sharpen critical thinking of students to enable selfassessment and self-learning. Around 15,000 questions have already been uploaded,” he informs.

E-LABS
The section includes experiments that have been recorded and enriched with animations. University has also recorded experiments in college laboratories and uploaded the videos under this section. “It will help students to learn the methodology of conducting experiments at their own pace,” he says.

E-LECTURES
The university has created a state-of-the-art studio to record lectures of faculty members and upload them on the portal, which can be accessed by every student. There will be two windows, one showing the recorded lecture and another showing the content in written format.

HOW TO ACCESS
In the beginning, the content of the portal will only be available to DU students. Every teacher will be given a login ID to manage a group of students who can access the portal. Students would need to subscribe to that group. ILLL has conducted workshops for teachers and students to train them in ICT-enabled skills. “We will work towards making the content available on the world-wide web

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