Teachers are as knowledge workers in the Gamut of Open and Distance Education.

Open and Distance Education is a paradigm shift in education when it is compared with face-to-face education. The education is aggressive in its letter and spirit. It is aggressive to meet societal, market and techno-managerial needs to meet global and global needs. They are enough scope to undertake experiments, innovation, networking with industries and various sector of the society on a pilot basis, once these experiments are con appropriated; it is possible to expand it to national and international spheres. The total quality ODL system, it is always a journey but not a destination in spheres. The watch dog of the ODL system is its teachers, they possess real traits of ODL system, and they are namely, Flexibility, Accessibility and educational equity in the democratic practices: otherwise, flexibility is the ODL promise, educational accessibility is its commitment and longing educational equity is its philosophy and ultimate dream. The founder practitioners in the spheres of Open and Distance Learning always emphasis that Open Learning and closed mind do not go together. It is rightly pointed out by the founders of the open learning system in Britain that…

John Daniel a renowned educator and a policy maker in the spheres of open and distance education emphasis “important aims for the development of education and training may group under five heads: Access, Cost Quality Flexibility Innovation. These are can be simplified under Indian circumstances as…

Access: Access to education is the major agenda before educational policy makers. The increase of gross enrolment ratio is the major plan agenda. The founding father of Open University emphasized need for access to education though open and distance education has justified by saying that “politics in democracy and elitism in politics do not go to gather”(Ram reddy,G.-1986). The concept of accessibility is the milestone for creating equity in education.

Cost: particularly from the public funded higher educational institutions all are under greater pressure of financial resources; generating resources and self financing course are major trusts before the higher education. The viable alternative for the higher education is to go for open and distance educational institutions whereby. The caution for generating money is maintain quality however, the objective may be, generating money or as a milch cow to existing educational institution.

Quality; it is both in terms of quality materials, maintenance to meet quantity of learners. The quality would meet both assurance and total gamut of open and distance education. Quality in developing countries context, it is decentralization of local needs and dialects in the teaching learning process and at the same time meeting with the global requirement to meet the market demands.

Flexibility: flexibility is the promise of open and distance education. It can accommodates heterogeneous/diverse background/ group of learners, provided flexible entry to pursue, the courses and Programmes of learners choice in its entry levels, meeting the individual and market demands of education, so that flexibility should enable pace and place of learners and fulfilling professional and individual learners learning obligations.

Innovation: open and distance education is a fertile land for experimentation, innovation and undertake creative experiments in education. Open and distance education can launch any type of programme under pilot basis by hiring the human and physical resources from all the spheres of society and can launch Programmes on pilot basis , once the pilot basis is successful it can be appropriated. It is the beauty and strength of open and distance education.

The real functions and traits and skill required by ODL Teachers

When one compares the role and responsibilities of a teacher in the open and distance education, the situation is totally different from the face-to-face education. They work in a team; their excellence is recognized in a team as an individual teacher. They are performing multifaceted activities in the open and distance education. They design, develop, evolve appropriate programme/course delivery strategies, evolve evaluate strategies to assess the learners performance and system performance. The teacher not only design develop various courses and Programmes, they also main and revise the programme time to time. Above all the teacher working for Open University needs to have desirable traits to work in team.

Expected Traits of knowledge workers in knowledge society:

Ø The knowledge workers must have good listening and communication skills.

Ø Have tolerance, faith and confidence in the process of making a product and striving for desirable direction.

Ø One he/she should have both competencies and commitments towards organizational goals.

Ø Possess integrity to acknowledge others knowledge, perceptions and experiences and to borrow their knowledge and acknowledge the source is very important.

Ø He/she working for knowledge society should learn to work in a team to attain the goals of an organization. Team spirit is the hall mark of open and distance education.

Ø He /she working for the knowledge should have patience to wait its long gestation results or its fruits.

Ø In the developing/ and developed context some extent politics are inevitable, hence it is desirable to make good politics and politics should be aimed at professional competitive development among the knowledge workers in knowledge society and

Ø The expected orientations must be active (Designing process) pro-active (in development process) process active (in evolving an appropriate delivery models suitable to the programme/course objective) and post-active (to judge the final out come of the learners and provide feed back to the system. Establish a healthy link, among the design, development, delivery and its evaluations, is must.

The system of distance education demands both distance education systemic specialization and discipline expertise from the teacher. Systemic expertise evolves proper distance learning techniques to impart education at distance. To reach the knowledge to isolated self-learner and discipline expertise to streamline the knowledge’s in its curriculum self-directed learning designs. In this process, the system expect from a teacher multifaceted skills and commitments such as…

· The aimed knowledge design must be directly useful to social and cultural demands of the society. Here a teacher must be a cultural agent of the society. S/he may otherwise called ‘cultural teacher’

· The product must be suitable to increase and produce knowledge which should be suitable to market demands. Here teacher must be catalyst to produce market demands. S/he may otherwise called ‘Corporate teacher’ and

· To develop product or to deliver the product, s/he should have techno-managerial skills in the globalizing era. Awareness, skills, competency and command over operations of technology is must to work in open and distance education. It is present need and future demands of open and distance education. Skills over techno-managerial skills. The teacher s/he may otherwise called ‘techno-managerial s teacher’.

The individual teacher must be pro-active to make proper designs of the programme suitable to society and to the market, , the teacher, S/he must be process-active to translate the design in to development and evolve an appropriate delivery channels suitable depending on the Programmes and finally S/he must be post-active to evolve and undertake learner’s and systems evaluation strategies and finally, S/he must be always vigilant and re-active and responsible to public praise and criticism for the out put S/he produced for open and distance education. The final product of open and distance education is always under public scrutiny.

Hence, teacher working in the open and distance education are involved in complex activities. They must be possessed with varieties of skills, such as, socially sensitive and relevant to their body of knowledge, having market orientations to improve the products of the market and having techno-managerial skills to mange the knowledge.

In this process, with the heavy work load and expected targets, they are becoming more generalist, also appear that they are alienated from their peer group, gradually loosing on their subject specialization, they are more prone to generalist rather than specialist. Since the system of work differ, when one compares with the face-to-face system of education, finally while working under a team their excellence is not exposed, this individual teacher recognition is only possible in face-to-face education system. The individual teacher is un-acknowledged legislators of the knowledge in open and distance education. Ultimately the mind set of the teachers and policy makers make the meaningful design, develop, and evolve an appropriate delivery and its evolution strategies.