ICRISAT Archival Report 2006 - The seedlings of success in the ...

Specific Objectives:
• Set up a content grid covering 10 participant SAU’s and ICAR institutions. The action will begin locally at
the participating institutions.
• Strengthen support infrastructure such as web studio and LMS and LCMS in all the participant institutions.
• Develop and validate 2000 hours of vocational ODL material, 500 hours of CE and equivalent of 1000
hours of extension material.
• Enable access to the grid from all the college campuses, field research stations, DL contact centers and
KVK’s using standard internet connectivity.
• Increase the enrollment in three years in ODL or extension engagement programs and initiate action with a
focus on bringing in more women learners.
• Organise specially designed faculty capacity strengthening programs in delivering tech-mediated learning
at various levels, and generate 500 hours equivalent online learning material.
• Develop a protocol to allow well-considered outsourcing of administrative and tech management work to
capable agencies (pvt/govt)
• Develop 10 IT-mediated rural information outreach centers per participating institute in partnership with
CSC and Mission 2007 consortium and test innovative learning and knowledge sharing processes with the
stakeholders through them.
Approach:
• Practice of digital repositories of information and learning objects will be followed and global standards
such as IMS will be adopted for ease of search and sharing across the participating institutions.
• The repositories will have tools to enable rapid customization of key information at any level, and to
deliver such information in print medium or similar others. This will be the key aspect of delivering
information to the rural learners and stakeholders in a context specific and relevant manner.
• Strengthening of faculty capacity in production and validation of shareable e-content through online and
real-time sessions with relevant experts.
• Enhancing the capacity of extension personnel in the use of online learning and information objects using
real-time and online sessions
• Capacity strengthening of ODL personnel in needs assessment, instructional design and monitoring
learners’ progress with support from domain experts in ODL.
• Rapid production of learning materials for use by mass media using the grid-linked repositories as the
source
Outputs and Deliverables:
• New diploma, license and certificate programs covering thousands of new rural and other learners.
• Highly integrated access to learning and extension material covering different languages.
• New continuing education programs for teachers, agri-entrepreneurs, and extension personnel
Outcome:
• The knowledge grid will be a key contribution to further strengthening agriculture extension services.
• Significant improvement in local/rural capacity in information management leads to higher levels of
productivity, income, improved access to the markets and better utilisation of public and citizen services at
the local level.
• Large scale reduction in the cost of production of development oriented education and information material
because of cooperative content creation.
• Unprecedented new opportunities for graduates in agriculture to provide knowledge-based services to a
wide range of clients.
• Rapid customization and localisation of generic content will be a key support in disaster preparedness
• A reasonably sized cadre of leaders in information management at various levels starting from the rural
extending to the University.
• New synergies built between IT resource organizations, SAU’s, extension agencies, media organizations
and different national programs.
• New aspects of knowledge management involving PPP would emerge and will be valuable in other sectors
in rural development.
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