Open Source for Higher Conventional and Open Education in India

Abstract

Distance Education in India has come a long way since the launch of correspondence courses in 1962 at the Delhi University. There have been many changes over the period of time, and thus, a transition was observed from print based correspondence courses to media supported distance education. With the advent of technology, expansion of telephone network, and lowering of tariff, there has been expansion of e-learning services, web based education, and mobile learning. Currently there are around 600 conventional (face-to-face) universities in India serving around 1.2 billion students. Starting with one Open University in 1982, now we have 15 open universities. There are single mode and dual mode distance education institutions. These provide instructions from print based to technology enabled means. All these developments transformed the teaching learning. Many of the institutions followed Open Educational Resources and Open Source movement. Reasons are varied for adopting open source. With the purpose to reduce the costs on software development, freedom to improve the software and freedom to redistribute to help neighbours has made individuals, institutions, and governments support open source. In this chapter, the author examines some of the initiatives of Open Source in the field of higher, open and distance education in India.