Impact of EDUSAT on School Students and Teachers

Phalachandra Bhandigadi
NCERT,

     Full text: HTML
     Last modified: August 25, 2006
     Presentation date: 10/31/2006 4:00 PM in NT Portland B
     (View Schedule)

Abstract
In the year 2004 the Govt. of India launched a dedicated Satellite called EDUSAT (Educational Satellite) to serve the educational sectors offering an interactive satellite based distance education system for the country. It is to provide connectivity to schools, colleges, and other similar institutions. Initially it is proposed to use the facilities in four different states for reaching different target groups. In Karnataka State the Edusat is being used to supplement classroom teaching in all the elementary schools (850 Schools) of one district.

The schools are provided with receiving solar backed system to receive signals (programmes) in all the 850 schools. On each day two programmes of 30 minutes were broadcast for the benefit of students of Grade III to VIII. The contents covered almost all subject areas of all the grades. In the academic year 2005-06 almost 200 video programmes were broadcast. The teachers were given training with respect to the use of television as medium of instruction and also to conduct Pre and post broadcast activities.

As part of evaluation of Edusat Project in Karnataka a comprehensive research study has been initiated to find out the impact on the attendance, and academic achievement of students by following experimental and control design. The content achievement (one test of about 20 items for each grade) and visual achievement (one test of 10 items for each grade) tests have been administered on students of different grades to ascertain the learning gains. The feedback from teachers have been obtained.

This paper will high light the implementation of the EDUSAT project and analysis the impact on students attendance, learning gains and attitude and opinion of teachers based on the data collected from about 2000 students and 200 teachers.