IGNOU-AISECT join hands to spread IT education in rural India

New Delhi, Oct 23 : To bring IT education to the doorstep of individuals even in the remotest corners of the country, the Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) and India's largest ICT training and services network 'All India Society for Electronics and Computer Technology' (AISECT) have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to start over 500 new IT learning centres.

The AISECT-IGNOU Learning Centres would launch seven IT and Management Courses, five hardware and networking courses and 17 vocational courses- all certified by IGNOU, in the first phase basket of over 100 new IT-based education and vocational training programmes.

Signing the MoU, AISECT Chairman and Managing Director Santosh Choubey said, ''The objective of partnering with IGNOU is to tap the huge potential of students, who reside in rural India at the block and panchayat levels. Today, the immediate need is to build vocational skills of people to make them immediately employable.

Through this initiative AISECT hopes to help people gain a sustainable livelihood for themselves in their community.'' The fact is that even today, millions of students in rural India are denied access to high quality, employment-oriented and skill development based education, and we believe that the efficient use of ICT and the Distance Education model can help bridge this gap effectively, he added.

The 'centres' would include Government of India sponsored Common Service Centres (CSCs), which have also been identified by the Ministry of Information Technology as centres which can offer IGNOU programmes, he informed.

''Students can even register themselves online at www.aisect.org.'' The centres are based on the 'AISECT Franchise Model' which has been duly recognised and appreciated by the World Bank and is rated as a highly sustainable and scalable model in India’s socio-technological development by the globally venerated Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-Ahmedabad).

Bestowed with various international awards in recognition of its unique and innovative efforts in developing and promoting information and communication technologies in rural and tribal areas, ISO 9001:2008 certified AISECT's domain spans across 27 states and three Union Territories through its 6,500 centres.

--UNI

(c) 2009 Published with permission from United News of India.
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