BHUBANESWAR: The state’s higher education system will soon onboard a ‘digital university format’ which aims at complete digitisation of 14 public universities.At the 52nd convocation of Utkal University on Friday, principal secretary of Higher Education department Bishnupada Sethi said the digital university format will be a common admission, automated examination, digital libraries, virtual tutorials, question banks and portal-based academic system.
Under the system, a student’s academic life cycle will be recorded to keep a track of his/her performance as he/she move up his/her career ladder. There is a provision of geo-tagging all students on campus and parents can also log in to the digital university to track their ward’s academic performance. Work on the digital university format has already been started by the department and it is likely to take shape in the next six months.
Public universities are changing their syllabus every three years with focus on ability enhancement of students. “We are now bringing in Open and Distance Learning (ODL) and Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) into the university system as National Education Policy-2022 components. Lakhs of students will benefit from this,” Sethi said.
Emphasising the need to re-frame educational practices so that students can become global champions of sustainable development, he urged students to include key sustainable development issues like climate change, disaster risk reduction, biodiversity, poverty reduction and sustainable consumption in whatever projects they undertake in the future.
Governor of Odisha and Chancellor of universities Prof Ganeshi Lal urged students to introspect about the values and principles they stand for. Stressing the importance of personal values, he asked students to reflect on what kind of person they want to be in the future. The governor urged the graduates to try to give back to their family, society and country which have nurtured them during the most significant phase of their life.
On the occasion, former chief justice of Orissa High Court Justice V Gopala Gowda, educationist and Kandhamal MP Dr Achyuta Samanta and DG (Aeronautical Systems) of DRDO Tessy Thomas were conferred Honoris Causa. DLitt and DSc were conferred on Pramod Kumar Mohanty (history) and Gopal Chandra Nanda (ayurveda) respectively for the current year. Similarly, PhD was conferred on 163 students. Gold medals were given away to around 99 meritorious students who scored the highest CGPA in their respective subjects. Among others, vice-chancellor Savita Acharya were present.
DIGITAL UNIVERSITY FOCUS
Project to be implemented under e-SAMARTH
Would aim at complete e-governance of varsities
Admission data of students, all university facilities, library data, etc. will be captured
Academic lifecycle of students, faculty and researchers’s lifecycles to be recorded