Theorizing the Untheorized: The Indian Context of ODL Pedagogies

Abstract

This paper is a deliberation on some crucial aspects of teaching-learning transactions in open and distance learning (ODL). This system, with its relative newness, has given cause for much debate within India regarding questions of 'openness', modes of pedagogy and teaching, the principles nurturing these modes and thus the ultimate question of 'quality' in education. The continuance of this debate also reflects the difficulty of any adequate theorization, which anchors knowledge-dissemination processes in institutions of higher education on the whole. The absence of an adequate contextual theorization keeps out of sight a sense of complacency in continuing with inherited assumptions regarding academic transactions in the ODL mode. Since ODL is still an evolving field in India, it is clear that unless some clarity is achieved with regard to the assumptions that guide academics in open and distance learning, the problematics of quality and equity must haunt this mode.

Keywords: openness, pedagogy, quality, equity, exit-criteria