Covid-19 crisis: Haryana Education Dept to broadcast educational content on AIR daily

Pradeep Sharma

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, June 29

Failure of the college students to access online e-learning platforms for a variety of reasons has forced the Education Department to switch to All India Radio(AIR) to impart distance education to its students during the Covid-19 crisis.

Under the plan unveiled by the Director-General (Higher Education) on Monday, four major AIR radio stations in Haryana would be broadcasting two half-an-hour shows daily at a common time to promote learning from home.

Education Minister Kanwar Pal Gujjar said the department’s initiative through radio was aimed at those students who were not able to access online learning for one reason or the other.

Officials said the principals of government and government-aided colleges had been asked to record the lectures from their faculity and subject experts and send them to the Director-General (Higher Education) by July 1.

After the receipt of audio recordings, the department would chalk out a detailed programme for the broadcast of two radio talks of half-an-hour daily, which would be in addition to the currently available online platforms. The initiative of providing education through radio is primarily aimed at the students of Haryana.

“The subject experts would be free to choose the topics for sessions of broadcast that are beneficial for the education of students persuing higher and technical education, giving priority to the importance of topics in examinations. Equal weightage should be given to all courses offered by the educational institutions,” the order said.

The Haryana Government recently cancelled the examinations for all college classes and decided to promote the students based on their past performances and internal assessments. The colleges have been shut in Haryana since March 16 as a precautionary measure to combat the Covid-19 pandemic.

The study from home through online and radio mediums would stand the students in good stead when they appeared in the next semester examinations later this year or next year, the officials added.