Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) has finalized their plans to start Arabic, Persian and Urdu majors at the secondary, bachelor and master's level, said professor Basir Ahmad Khan, the vice chancellor of IGNOU during a discussion with the media in Jeddah Wednesday. There are many unemployed Indians in the Middle East – professionals, skilled and unskilled, sometimes because of their Arabic language skills. A course in Arabic would help them communicate with the natives, he said. The public has been engulfed into a haze of confusion over the difference between correspondence education and distance learning education, he said. While the difference might be blurry, the distance learning education is a field of education that focuses on the pedagogy, technology, and instructional systems design that aim to deliver education to students who are not physically “on site”, he said. The student can be anywhere in the world, even at the beach, to study once a computer and Internet connection are available. This way has made education more accessible to everyone, providing students with similar degrees like regular students and proper qualification, he said. IGNOU is a good example of that. IGNOU has the proper technology systems through which learners are served all over the world. “Up till now we have around 2200 study centers in India and 40 centers in foreign countries,” Khan said. Based in Delhi, the IGNOU has a regional center in each capital of the state of India. The university stands out as the only distance learning institution in the world with over 1.8 million students. “It also offers professional courses and has now acquired the status of Open and Distance Learning (ODL),” Khan said. Thorough study materials prepared by IGNOU's teaching experts are available upon to foreign e-learning administrations and other examination services. The university spends over SR18 million on only study materials, with its students provided with physical one-on-one and online services. But no high school, no problem. Briefing the audience on IGNOU, Riaz Mulla, President of IGNOU at Saudi Arabia, said people who have not completed their secondary education can go for IGNOU's Bachelor's of Preparatory Program (BPP) which would enable them to enroll for Degree/Diploma courses. He said a student without the required 12-pass qualification can study the six-month preparatory course to become eligible for admission into a bachelor's degree course of study to obtain one of IGNOU's degrees accredited worldwide. When asked for Urdu syllabus, Khan said IGNOU has approached Maulana Azad National University (MANU), Hyderabad, India for cooperation. Experts from both universities are actively working on it. He said a student with a degree in Urdu from IGNOU would have joint degree certificate signed by vice chancellors of both the universities. The degree would be considered from both IGNOU and MANU. Prof. Khan has published three books and many research papers and articles. He has been writing a weekly column “Ahwaal-e-Hind” for more than 10 years regarding current affairs in a daily Urdu newspaper. Multilingual Khan, who speaks English, Arabic, Persian, Hindi and Urdu Languages, is specialized in Comparative Studies of Religions, Islamic Studies, Sufism and Indian Culture and current affairs. __
