User:Santosh Panda
About me
Santosh Panda (born 1959), M.Phil & Ph.D. (Education), Cert. in ETV (BBC, UK), a Fulbright Scholar and a Professor of Distance Education is Director, Staff Training & Research Institute of Distance Education (STRIDE); and Head, Inter-University Consortium for Technology-Enabled Flexible Education and Development (IUC-TEFED), Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU), India. He was a Visiting Professor in 2004 and in 2005 at the Manchester Metropolitan University, UK and in 2004 at the University of London, UK; and in 2003 was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, USA.
Dr Panda has previously served as Director, Staff Training & Research Institute, IGNOU (1997-2000); and Director, Research and Policy Division, Association of Indian Universities (AIU) (1994-1997). From 1987-1994, he was Lecturer, Senior Lecturer and Reader in Distance Education at IGNOU; and during 1984-1987 served as Lecturer in the Faculty of Education, and as Project Officer at the Center for Adult & Continuing Education, both at Kurukshetra University, India. He is also Coordinator of IGNOU's International MA in Distance Education Programme, sponsored by the Commonwealth of Learning and the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation, and UNESCO-IICBA; and Coordinator of the National M.Ed. Programme sponsored by the Distance Education Council and National Council for Teacher Education, Government of India.
As a faculty member and as Director of STRIDE and of AIU, Dr Panda has over 21 years of experience in policy and practice for distance education, educational technology, higher education, curriculum development, EFA and staff development and research within distance education system in India comprising 12 open universities, and 106 dual-mode universities, and a number of campus-based universities in India in areas of: planning and management, curriculum design, instructional design and development of multi-media learning and training materials, learner support and mentoring, student and program evaluation, media and technology, costing and quality assurance, and administration and management. He has also been, from time to time, teaching three masters courses at a distance: 'economics of distance education', 'communications media and technology for distance education', and 'research in distance education'. He has conducted above 210 workshops; presented 3 audio and 13 video programmes, and 7 teleconferencing sessions; and completed 10 research studies. His current research areas include: learner persistence and dropout, student learning styles, curriculum design and development, funding and costing, teacher education and staff development, quality assurance, and new educational technologies.
As founding head of IUC-TEFED, he has been responsible for initiating policy formulation and system-wide implementation of new educational media and technology focusing particularly on interactive multimedia, online and blended learning, and faculty development towards effective transition from traditional distance learning to blended and online learning. At IUC, he has also been supporting introduction of interactive multimedia in primary and elementary schools under EFA, and effective pedagogic application of the Indian EduSat in the country. His latest research areas, in this context, include: mobile learning, blended learning, online professional development, virtual research, online repositories, and quality benchmarks for online learning and services.
Dr. Panda has published 16 books, 32 book chapters, and 48 articles and research papers nationally and internationally; and is Founder Editor of a referred international journal Staff & Educational Development International; Co-Editor of internationally referred Indian Journal of Open Learning; Editorial Board Member of Canadian 'Journal of Distance Education', 'International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning', Australian 'Distance Education', 'Tertiary Learning & Professional Development', 'Malaysian Online Journal of Instructional Technology', American 'International Journal of Instructional Media', and a few others. His latest books include Planning and Management in Distance Education (RoutledgeFalmer, New York , 2003) and, with William Bramble, Economics of Distance and Online Learning (Lawrence Erlbaum, New Jersy & London, 2006, forthcoming).
