DU to consider proposal for setting up centre to offer job-oriented courses

NEW DELHI: Delhi University will consider a proposal for setting up a centre to offer job-oriented courses for students enrolled in its Campus of Open Learning. The discussion on establishing the centre will be taken up at the academic council meeting on March 22.

Payal Mago, director, Campus of Open Learning, said, “This centre will house a media centre and will provide online and experiential learning courses to students. To enhance the employability of students of the School of Open Learning (SOL), these will be skills-based courses and tailored as per their needs.” For instance, she said, many of the SOL students were pursuing graduation while also handling their family businesses and the centre might offer a course on how to run a family business and increase profitability.

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“Students will also get to learn basic computer skills and some languages that will help them,” she said. To start with, the centre will offer three diploma courses --journalism (English and Hindi), post graduate diploma in library automation services, and mushroom cultivation. There will be a mix of online and offline classes – either 50-50 per cent or 60-40 per cent, she said.

“Students will get hands-on learning. For instance, in journalism, they will have to do internships, and in mushroom cultivation, they will be taught how to cultivate five types of mushrooms, and for that, we have identified five nodal points,” Mago said.

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The journalism course will be carried out in collaboration with Delhi University’s Hansraj College while for the other courses, experts have been identified. Nominal charges will be levied on the courses, Mago said, and they will be run on a no-profit basis, she said.

The courses will be in accordance with the National Education Policy, according to the agenda of the meeting. In a related development, the Delhi University Teachers’ Association said its members will boycott classes on Tuesday to demand one-time regulation for the absorption of ad hoc and temporary teachers. It said they will stage a protest outside the venue of the academic council meeting.