Hyderabad: Universities will harbour digital spaces, but this will not sound the death knell of the brick-and-mortar universities. Despite the digitalization of education, and the availability of the open educational resource (OER) materials, the physical presence of teachers will continue to be necessary in the classrooms, said Prof. Furqan Qamar, former Vice Chancellor, University of Rajasthan and Central University of Himachal Pradesh.
He was speaking at the inaugural session of a two-week Refresher Course in Library Science that boasts of more than 60 participants. It is being organized by the Malviya Mission Teachers’ Training Centre (MMTTC) at Maulana Azad National Urdu University, which was formerly known as the UGC-HRDC.
Prof. Qamar, who also served as the Secretary-General of the Association of Indian Universities (AIU), pointed out that the digital tools will supplement education but will not be able to replace teachers. In the future, libraries would have to help the students and faculty members distinguish between information and knowledge and help them convert the former into the latter, he added.
Earlier, Dr. Akhtar Pervez, University Librarian spelled out the course objectives. ‘The future lies with open access resources but our greatest challenge is to manage and integrate both the print and the electronic resources, he said.
Prof. Saneem Fatima, Director, UGC-MMTTC also spoke on the occasion.
