Objectives

Key objectives and focus areas of IDEA.

OBJECTIVES OF IDEA

The following are the main objectives of the Indian Distance Education Association (IDEA) and it shall endeavour to achieve the same by undertaking various activities:

To provide a forum for interaction amongst individuals, institutions and organisations engaged in teaching, research or other programmes related to Open and Distance Education.
To represent and undertake various activities promoting the interests of practitioners leading to the growth and development of Distance Education Institutions in India.
To provide documentation, bibliographic and other services.
To disseminate needed information to all agencies engaged in ODL and Online teaching, research and other educational development programmes.
To organise periodic conference, seminars, workshops, meetings etc. and undertake all those activities, which will help strengthen Open and Distance Education in India.
To publish Reports, Documents, Newsletters, Journal and other Literature, establish and organise libraries, documentation, reference centres to serve the teachers, researchers and other members drawn from Open and Distance Education Institution.
To develop a network for collection of information relating to teaching, research and other development activities related to the Open and Distance Education.
To work out details relating to Inter-University collaboration; mediate between Government and Non-Governmental Organisations, Funding Agencies, Research Organisations etc., while undertaking various programs mutually concerned for protecting the interests of Open and Distance Education.
To work in collaboration with other like-minded organisations/ Distance Education/ Online teaching Institutions towards furtherance to its objectives.
To join hands with other likeminded Associations at National and International levels and initiate joint action projects mutually helpful to all individual members in particular and participant - member institutions in general.

An analysis of the above list of broad-based objectives which may not be fundamentally different from that of the other organisations operating at different levels representing other kinds of Associations of Teachers or Educators, still there is, practically speaking enormous difference in their operational terms. The basic difference lies in its 'initiation' itself as those of its constituent members belong to different conventional disciplines drawn accidentally into the ODL System to conduct their operations in a non- conventional manner. Most of the teachers entered into the system had to work out their own models, procedures and processes and evolve their own set of activities, learn and relearn what is really needed for them since their past experience has been totally different from that of the present experience. Such a kind of its formation could make it more creative and innovative in its functional sense over the years.

Though IDEA has specific objectives and innumerable functions, it has its own conceptual understanding of Open and Distance Learning (ODL) and its approach to provide professional services to distance educators. Hence in the following paras an analysis of its conceptual understanding of ODL has been attempted.