The Communications

Directorate of Distance Education

University of Kashmir

ISSN: 0975-6558

The value of open and distance education in Nigeria is undermined by the poor public image of the system across every stratum of the society. This study investigated the public perceptions of distance education in Nigeria with a view to underscoring the need for counselling interventions in order to place distance learning in its proper perspective and in the same pedestal with what is obtainable in other countries of the world. The study employed the descriptive survey research design with a population of 302 respondents randomly selected from students, civil servants and private individuals who engage in one form of business or the other in the North Central, South East, and South West geopolitical zones of Nigeria. A self-structured questionnaire called Perception Profile of Distance Education (PPDE) was structured in Likert format using SA for Strongly Agree, A for Agree, D for Disagree, and SD for Strongly Disagree, which were weighed 4, 3, 2, and 1 respectively for data collection. The instrument was subjected to Cronbach Alpha analysis. A result of 0.89 was obtained to ascertain the reliability of the instrument. The data collected were analysed using the SPSS platform where the research questions were answered using descriptive statistics (mean and standard deviation) while the hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level using inferential statistics (ANOVA and t-test). The results of the study indicated poor public perceptions of distance education in Nigeria, which renders the certificates obtained in such institutions unacceptable in many establishments for employment and as a prerequisite for higher degrees in some conventional universities. Based on the findings of the study, it was recommended that Nigerians should be well informed about the operations of open and distance education using counselling services to work on their mindsets through cognitive restructuring, information dissemination and value re-orientation.

CT The policies, expectations and avenues for strengthening of Vocational Education Programme (VEP) in India through Open and Distance modes hardly need an emphasis as a national priority in the education sector. The Vocational Education is to be an indispensable part of the total education system in the country. The need for providing skill development to out of school population has also been accepted and stressed upon through various policy statements in order to provide an opportunity to prioritized groups such as drop outs, girls and women, SC,ST, OBC communities, slum dwellers, rural youth, urban poor etc. This is much more so for those who do not want to undergo any academic programmes after class X and also for the unemployed youth in general. All these expectations can be fulfilled if non-formal Vocational Education and Training (short-terms, long-term and continuing) programmes with entrepreneurial and self employment skills are provided, keeping in view the current needs of the community. Such skills are to be rightly oriented to facilitate quick employment (self or wage). There is, therefore, a dire need to provide an added impetus to the programme of “Vocationalisation of Education” at all levels by (i) Redesigning of Vocational Education; and (ii) Forging Linkages between the “World of School” and “world of Work”. For this purpose the programme is to be understood within a national framework if serious attempt at Vocationalisation of Education, in its operational term, is aimed at. In this paper an attempt has been made to provide a list of parameters which may be helpful for preparation of vocational education programmes and their transaction through open and distance learning mode.

The present paper explores and examines the situation of school education with reference to secularist perspective. The study is conducted in Delhi schools which are funded under MHRD scheme to strengthen the school education research programme. The basic objective of the work is to re-examine polices, school practices and teachers’ perspective about secularism and secular school education. To achieve the objective various existing theoretical perspectives were analyzed critically, observation of various practices is done in school to enfold the secular and non-secular practices, and discussions have been done with school teachers to explore their views about secular school education and its need. Analysis provides a comprehensive perspective about the current situation of schools in Delhi with reference to secular perspective. Few suggestion based on analysis provide strength to the paper and left with many untied threads to explore further in this field

The study was conducted with the objective to work on the captioned title, “Vocational Maturity of the Vocational Education Stream Subjects in Kashmir”. The objective in general is to compare the Vocational maturity of vocational stream subjects (ITI, Polytechnic and NIT courses). The N-1502 subjects were drawn randomly and the Manju Mehta’s Vocational Attitude Maturity Scale was used. The comparison was made among the various vocational courses on Vocational maturity at ITI, Polytechnic and NIT levels. The results of the said study revealed that there is significant difference on Vocational maturity among vocational stream subjects on dimension wise (V1- V8) and at all the three levels of vocational education (ITI, Polytechnic and NIT level courses).

CT The most important Public policy debates today surround the use of euthanasia to end the sufferings of terminally ill patients. This debate revolves round one of the most important aspects that is right to life and it is the central concern for one and all. This research paper is an attempt to analyze the legal issues involved in legalizing euthanasia and the consequences thereof. The research paper will also focus on the role played by the judiciary in India related to euthanasia.

The most important Public policy debates today surround the use of euthanasia to end the sufferings of terminally ill patients. This debate revolves round one of the most important aspects that is right to life and it is the central concern for one and all. This research paper is an attempt to analyze the legal issues involved in legalizing euthanasia and the consequences thereof. The research paper will also focus on the role played by the judiciary in India related to euthanasia.

Cinema is a language that transcends all borders. Films become a form of communication of narrating stories from societies- not just where society is presently and what it's doing now- but where society has been. And these stories travel to other societies where they may or may not find relevance. The present paper attempts to recognise such a relevance of Post Islamic Revolution Iranian cinema to Kashmir. Kashmir’s cultural history traces its roots in the Central Asia. It finds close proximity and resemblence with Iran. The Iranian films of the post revolution era are culturally rich and religion finds a large place in it. The women folk are shown fully covered and there is an attempt to maintain and depict largely accepted moral values in the cinematic language. The locales and depiction of close knit societies and construct of families bear a striking resemblance to Kashmiri society. The present paper attempts to understand adaptation of Iranian Cinema to cater to the cultural requirments of Kashmiri society in changed circumstances. The paper also tries to find if it can act as a model for Kashmiri film makers.

Education has been and continues to be one of the major concerns of the modern as well as the traditional societies. It is a powerful instrument that decides the destiny of the mankind. It is a major force behind the development that mankind has achieved so far and will achieve in the future. It is essential that every new generation must be given the training in the ways of the group so that the same tradition will continue. Every society has its own ways and means of fulfilling this need. ‘Education’ has come to be recognized as one of the core ways of fulfilling this need. It is increasingly being recognized that education is one of the pre-requisites of social change and development. All the countries of the world have placed high premium on education. The race of achieving greater and challenging objectives in the present era became an important issue for every independent country, but some countries including our own country, face some different challenges as some of the minority communities especially Muslims who live under poverty and deprivation are not able to contribute in the economy and development of the country. Literacy which is a first step to education is lowest of the Muslim minority and the educational scenario of minorities living in tribal and far flung areas of the country is extremely miserable, the inter-state variation in their literacy rates is also very high. Also, their literacy rate in some districts of J and K state is abysmally low. In this paper the researcher has discussed the areas of intervention and challenges and appropriate measures are suggested to improve and promote the education of minorities in India.

The proliferation of ICTs has impacted economic, social, cultural and educational aspects of human life. However, over past few years it has been observed that ICTs are being exploited by activists to provide impetus to social movements. The use of social media, subset of (ICTs) by activists in social movements in different parts of world (Arab Spring, the Occupy Wall Street)etc has generated lot of debate among scholars and academicians (Espinoza-Vasquez, 2013) and at the same time ICTs acts as an alternative media which allows activists not only to disseminate information but to organize, discuss, debate political issues bypassing the traditional forms of communication. In other words, activists bypass the regulation and censorship especially in authoritarian regimes. Since ICTs are cost effective when compared to traditional forms of communication because “mass-media communication required centralized means of information production and large investments in physical capital, networked media are based on relatively cheap personal computers interconnected through the internet”(Enjolras, Steen-Johnsen, & Wollebæk, 2012). It gives activists a necessary advantage to lower down the barriers needed for mobilisation in social movements. ICTs reduce the cost of participation because political activity “puts demand on the people’s scarce resources”(Rosenstone & Hansen, 1993). With Arab Spring as case study, this paper underlines how ICTs including social media played a role in the Arab Spring. The very nature of ICTs is such that they tend to a amplify the spread of information “by allowing users to forward information to their followers and those to their own followers, and so on”(Kang, VIP: Incorporating Human Cognitive Biases in a Probabilistic Model of Retweeting, 2015). At the same time diffusion of ideas happen not only happen in real time but it allows activists to organize events, protests by ensuring visibility (Kang, 2015) b) ICTs are not limited to a certain place, therefore, the message can virtually reach anywhere which enhances the rate of discussions because participants can pitch their ideas from any part of world.c) Not only it builds opinions “but also to give a shape to the way in which people come together and act together (Gerbaudo, 2012), in other words – participation. d) ICTs connects people which allows individual to influence each other’s behaviour and in the process creating cascades and “thus produce population-wide, collective outcomes”(Easley & Kleinberg, 2010).

It is a prevailing truth that conventional education system is not able to cater the need of masses. There is also a debate that the education provided through distance and open learning is quality oriented or not? If, so, how they can satisfy the learner to attain their goal? It doesn’t matter that what was the scion philosophy of the distance education but today everyone wants wall free quality education without too much burden. To satisfy the needs of the learner these universities are doing maximum efforts to maintain the quality of education and in process of learner-teacher interaction. Today the learner is not differentiating between conventional and distance education. Therefore, the ratio of learners in the open and distance universities is increasing rapidly in last years. This paper emphasizes on the quality maintaining process of the open and distance universities to assure the quality to give quality education.

For the past twenty years, the use of ICT has fundamentally changed the practices and procedures of nearly all forms of activities within business and governance. Organizations especially educational institutions are increasingly investing in the use of information and communication technology (ICT) to support all aspects of organizational work from group work to individual teaching, training and learning. ICT is used not only for the delivery of lectures and materials, but also for administration and management purposes. Traditional libraries now converted to resource center with the use ICT. Teaching students at universities must avoid the traditional styles that students were familiar with at high school. Although ICT may be available at high schools, its use at higher education is completely different, because teaching at university level will use ICT in different ways to meet the objectives of mature students.

The present research endeavor was aimed to assess job satisfaction and self esteem among teachers & to study the correlation between them. The sample for the present study consisted of 100 teachers working in different private and Govt. schools. To assess job satisfaction and self esteem among these teachers, The Generic Job Satisfaction Scale developed by Scott Macdonald, and Peter MacIntyre (1997) & Rosenberg’s Self Esteem Scale (1965) were used. Pearson’s product moment correlation & t- test were used for statistical analysis. The results of the present study revealed that there is a positive correlation between job satisfaction and self esteem indicating, “More the job satisfaction – more is the self esteem”. It was also found that there is a significant difference in job satisfaction among teachers with respect to their gender. The females were found to be more satisfied with their jobs as compared to males. It was also found that there is a significant difference in job satisfaction among teachers with respect to their type of organization. The govt. teachers were found to be more satisfied with their jobs as compared to private teachers. Significant difference was also found in job satisfaction among teachers with respect to their income and age. The females were found to be more satisfied with their jobs as compared to males

Urbanization implies a change in the economic, social and cultural aspects of the society. It is a process of becoming urban, the movement of people or processes to urban areas, increase of urban areas, population or processes. Globally, more people live in urban areas than in rural areas with 54 per cent of the world’s population residing in urban areas in 2014. In 1950, 30 per cent of the world’s population was urban, and by 2050, 66 per cent of the world’s population is projected to be urban. First the developed countries and now the developing countries like India has become the epicentre of rapid urbanization. Based on a sample of 400 respondents in the city of Srinagar and using interview schedule as the tool of data collection, the study explores the social impact of urbanization on the institution of family like breakdown of joint family system, authority pattern, family structure, economic independence of women and high cost of living etc.

The present research endeavor was aimed to assess job satisfaction and self esteem among teachers & to study the correlation between them. The sample for the present study consisted of 100 teachers working in different private and Govt. schools. To assess job satisfaction and self esteem among these teachers, The Generic Job Satisfaction Scale developed by Scott Macdonald, and Peter MacIntyre (1997) & Rosenberg’s Self Esteem Scale (1965) were used. Pearson’s product moment correlation & t- test were used for statistical analysis. The results of the present study revealed that there is a positive correlation between job satisfaction and self esteem indicating, “More the job satisfaction – more is the self esteem”. It was also found that there is a significant difference in job satisfaction among teachers with respect to their gender. The females were found to be more satisfied with their jobs as compared to males. It was also found that there is a significant difference in job satisfaction among teachers with respect to their type of organization. The govt. teachers were found to be more satisfied with their jobs as compared to private teachers. Significant difference was also found in job satisfaction among teachers with respect to their income and age. The females were found to be more satisfied with their jobs as compared to males.

Urbanization; breakdown of joint family system, family structure, economic independence of women, Srinagar city

This paper gives a brief report about search-based software engineering (SBSE) and the scope of the field, in research interest. The paper briefly reviews widely used optimization techniques and the important elements required for their successful application to software engineering. The paper also sets out the new techniques, which can be formulated to attain the success.

Mid-Day Meal Scheme is very popular in Indian context at elementary level. In the present paper an attempt has been made to discuss the role of mid day meal scheme for enhancing the enrolment of children at school level.

In the contemporary times, media has acquired a very significant role in shaping and even altering the opinion of public and governments alike. In the politically contested spaces, the significance of media acquires much more proportions especially in the light of multiple narratives and discourses. This paper aims to study Mirza Waheed’s novel The Collaborator in how it presents a critiquing engagement with the language of media propaganda in how it alters different narratives. The paper seeks to highlight how the novel offers a subtle critique of the propaganda idiom of officially sanctioned media vis-à-vis the armed conflict in Kashmir. The paper draws references from the works of various eminent theorists who have put forward their postulates about the functional and structural realms of the contemporary media.

This paper attempts at providing an analytical insight into the emergence of a new media and cyber world along with the socio-political arrangements around it. It also tries to highlight the importance of new media in India and its entry into Kashmir, where the penetration of this media is increasing at a fast pace The journey of the media has seen different eras and phases reflecting the change in the audience’s tastes, which again was based on the how media evolved its offerings. The world has now seen a shift from industrial society to the current information society, with the development and proliferation of communication patterns, information technology and media. This media is acting as a superhighway of information, new platform for user-generated content, interaction and communication. It will be interesting to see how the Indian Society has adopted to this media through general instances, while reflecting upon the studies conducted. The rise of the Internet challenges both the traditional theories of communication and the relationship between media and society. The paper attempts to reflect upon this and also analyze the social, cultural, and ethical debates and concerns that have emerged from it. It will discuss the social consequences as a result of openness of this media, which include copyright issues, privacy and identity concerns, exposure to porn and violence and cyber bullying and other crimes etc.

Based on an analysis of teacher education in Jammu and Kashmir state, this article draws together a set of dilemmas that face the field, arguing that a comphrensive policy is required to complement the more common institutional practices of teacher education in the state. The article concludes with thoughts on some promising directions for the improvement of the field of teacher education in the state of Jammu and Kashmir.