NIOS : The Way Forward - The National Institute of Open Schooling

34 / NIOS: The Way Forward
It would be wrong to assume that all educational objectives (cognitive, affective,
and psychomotor) can be taken care of by study materials alone. When it
comes to practical work, or to the development of social skills and life skills,
study materials need to be supplemented by contact programmes, and through
well designed experiences and reflection. The availability of tutors and teachers
as mentors who are ready to accompany the students in their learning
experiences is a major support system to holistic learning and development in
the ODL as in the formal system.
4.3 Regional Centres and Study Centres
NIOS has set up 11 regional Centres in different parts of the country. The
Regional Centres are located in Allahabad, Bhopal, Chandigarh, Delhi,
Guwahati, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Kochi, Kolkata, Patna and Pune. Under each,
the Accredited Institutes serve as study centres. Currently, they total 3286.
These include 1085 Accredited Vocational Education Institutes. With the aim
to reduce or eliminate distance and to provide quick information and support
to the learner, these regional centres and study centres act as information
centres, resource consultation centres and tutorial and counselling centres.
4.4 Personal Contact Programmes (PCP)
Even though the learners are located at great distances from the headquarters,
the learners have to maintain some degree of contact with the teacher, besides
the print and audio or video contacts. Mentoring and accompaniment are
non-negotiable components in any effective process of learning, especially in
the formative years. This is also true, when one deals with learners, who had
experienced a great deal of failure or deprivation and are hoping to get a
second chance access to life through a second chance education. Such students
need this teacher accompaniment. The quality of this relationship, this rista,
makes a great difference in the ODL. As regards budgeting of time during
contact programmes, sixty percent of time should be devoted to solving
individual problems or on tutorials. In the remaining time, students can be
provided teaching of basic concepts. A small gap in understanding of basic
concepts results in wider disparities of student’s performance later on.
4.5 Mind Maps
NIOS had developed Mind Maps or concept Maps to help the students to
understand the topic of a whole chapter better, by seeing all the connections
and sub-connections and how each is linked to the other, namely their interdependence.
Like a spider’s web, the Mind Map has major anchor lines and
sub-lines attached to these. MM demonstrates a pathway to better learning. It
will help answer the questions: what comes before and what comes after;
what is the cause and what is the effect; what is the principle and what are the
applications etc. It is as much a teaching help to the teacher as it is a learning
help to the learner. The entire course can be presented as a summary Mind
Map, which gives them a holistic perspective or bird’s eye view of the whole
course. Similarly, one topic can also be put as a Mind Map. When undertaken