Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU)

The Indira Gandhi National Open University was established by an Act of Parliament in 1985 to spread higher education by making it available to the learners, providing an opportunity to high-quality education to students irrespective of age, region, religion and gender, offering a diverse range of academic programmes by giving professional and vocational orientation to the courses, and promoting and developing distance education in India.

Through its modular approach to socially and academically relevant programmes,

Resource sharing, collaboration and networking with conventional universities, open universities and other institutions/organisations, the system is based on students’ need analysis and convergence of open and conventional education systems.

Indira Gandhi National Open University offers Certificates, Diplomas, Advanced Diplomas, Post Graduate Diplomas and Degrees, which are traditional as well as innovative. Most of these courses have been launched after an initial survey of the need for such programmes.

They are introduced to fulfil the learners’ needs for certifications, skills enhancement, professional qualifications, continuing education and professional development at the workplace, self-enrichment, and diversification of knowledge and empowerment.

It has launched a series of 24-hour Educational Channels ‘Gyan Darshan’. The university is the prime agency for these channels and regular transmissions are done from the studios at Electronic Media Production Centre (EMPC), IGNOU. It also has a regular educational broadcast with a facility for live interaction for the students for the best learning experience.

The entire study material is exclusively prepared by teams of experts drawn from different universities and specialized institutions in the area spread throughout the country as well as in-house faculty. The learning material is deeply examined by the industry experts, in-house faculty and edited by the language experts at IGNOU before these are printed for distribution. Similarly, audio/visual learning materials are produced in supervision with the course writers, in-house faculty and producers. The material is scrutinized by the university faculty as well as other experts and edited/updated/modified, wherever needed before they are finally dispatched to the students, Study Centres and Telecast through Gyan Darshan.