ICT MEDIATED LEARNING ENVIRONMENT IN HIGHER EDUCATION

Information and communication technologies (ICT) have become commonplace entities in all aspects of life. Across the past twenty years the use of ICT has fundamentally changed the practices and procedures of nearly all forms of endeavor within business, governance and education. The world is moving rapidly around digital media and information and thus the role of ICT in education is becoming more and more important. This importance will continue to grow and develop in the 21st century. Higher education institutions have been undergoing transformations in response to a wave of education sector reforms and the promise of ICTs in teaching, research, and learning. The fast growth and convergence of ICTs have also forced academic institutions to react to the new way of knowledge creation, management, and distribution.

Most of HE institutions in India now possess abundant computers and technological infrastructure; there is considerable variability in adoption patterns when it comes to the activities and purposes for which ICT is being used. Ministry of Human Resource Development, UGC, CEC and other educational bodies are implementing many ICT project considering the wide geographical, economical and social diversity within India.

Information and communication technologies (ICTs) are a diverse set of technological tools and resources used for creating, storing, managing and communicating information. For educational purposes, ICTs can be used to support teaching and learning as well as research activities including collaborative learning and inquiring. One of the main applications of the ICTs in higher education is teaching-learning and research using these modern technologies.

ICTs has proven its importance in Distance and Open Learning with its wide range of benefits starting from self-learning content, student support services, learner-teacher communication, online assessment and many more.

The researcher has also worked upon several ICT Projects sponsored by World Bank targeted to higher education like techED1, TechEd2, TEQIP etc. and experienced various positive and negative aspects towards using ICT at higher education. This induced the researcher to undertake this research study to find out potential and challenges in the use and adoption of ICT in Higher Education.

The researcher in his study has focused the use and implementation of ICTs at higher education institutions in India. As after IT revolution, Pune city has widely expanding and becoming metropolitan city. Savitribai Phule Pune University is one of the biggest and oldest universities in India and considered University for Potential Excellence by UGC. It is also considered as Oxford of east. Savitribai Phule Pune University with its global reach and networking is truly considered one of the best universities representing Indian Higher Education at National and International level. So, the researcher has considered his research study focused to colleges and institutions affiliated to Savitribai Phule Pune University and believe that the finding of the research can be generalized to Indian context.