Edu-leaders

IGNOU will be collaborating with Sahaj—a social service organisation—to help approximately 100 million youths across the country through vocational online courses, says Vice Chancellor V.N. Rajasekharan Pillai. By the end of 2010, the university has promised to take the online courses to 27,255 common service centres in Assam, Bihar, Jammu and Kashmir, Orissa, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh and Bengal. “This is the first time that online education, through distance mode, will reach the remotest corners of this country, empowering the rural poor. The IGNOU-Sahaj partnership will help bridge the educational divide within the rural landscape and make advanced computer education available to all villagers,” Pillai said recently. A total of five courses—diploma in advanced computers, certificate programme in HTML, certificate programme in Java Script, certificate programme in SQL and certificate programme in Flash— are already available. A candidate has to pass matriculation to be eligible. All programmes will be accredited to IGNOU. Sahaj will administer the programmes, including enrollments, registration, fee collection, evaluation and perform the IGNOU certification.