All state-owned universities in Odisha to embrace latest technologies in a phased manner to become digital

Updated on: Saturday, June 22, 2013

All state-owned universities in Odisha would embrace latest technologies in a phased manner to become digital varsities akin to their counterparts in Maharashtra, official sources said on Friday.

The state-owned Odisha Knowledge Corporation Limited (OKCL) would soon sign MoUs with Utkal University, Ravenshaw University, Berhampur University, Sambalpur University, Fakir Mohan University and North Odisha University to replicate the Maharashtra Knowledge Corporation Limited's model of digital university, secretary, higher education, Gagan Dhal said. OKCL, of which the chief secretary is chairman, is under the administrative jurisdiction of the higher education department.

"All the universities have made their presentations regarding their plans to digitize various operations. Their respective syndicates have to give the go-ahead for the MoUs," Dhal said. "This is one of our major initiatives as part of our efforts to reform the higher education sector," he added.

Official sources said the digital university model would help varsities offer a one-stop solution to different issues like managing students and colleges. Students as well as officers would gain from it. "Students would benefit as they would be given personalized login to access e-learning, exam schedules, different kinds of relevant alerts, information and documents online," an officer said.

For university administrators, digitization would aid them in minimizing paper work and better manage the application, academic examination and administrative processes, sources noted.

Officials said the e-facility could be extended to college students and facilitation centres can be set up to assist in implementing the project. On an experimental basis, the project will be tested in certain educational institutes this year before being fully implemented in 2014-15 academic session. Varsity and college officials will be trained to deal with the software under the project, sources added.

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