Massive Open Online Course: Virtual Learning Environment

Technology has changed our lifestyle in all aspect: education, entertainment, business and others.In past, education assumed to be prospered on only in the presence of teacher and student inside a small cottage called GURUKUL. It was believed that the direct supervision of GURU is very necessary to impart good education over the children/student. Now the time has been changed. People are advocating towards a teacher-less class i.e virtual class. Online course is making it possible.Massive online course is getting popular day by day due to two main reasons.

 

PC: Wikipedia

Firstly, These courses are provided online and don't have any time constraint to attend class on the web. Whenever  there is a free time, candidate can log in to course and complete the lectures, assignments and other activities. It provides greater flexibility to study hours to peoples who are busy in their work and can't attend regular lecture class on campus.

Secondly, These course cost very less or sometime comes free of cost and many people can participate on course at a time. During the course, one don't need to spend any money on purchasing books, copy and pay the college fees. It is sufficient to pay small amount of money per course to get a verified copy of certificate after completion of course. Massive amount of people can take part in online course as they all are operated through the web. It don't need to set up class room, arrange bench-desk and pay for furniture etc. Simply one can connect to internet which is very chap now days and can access his/her favorite course online.

The only demerits of MOOC is that one can't feel the lecturer as vivid as it happens between student and teacher in class room.

In summary, it can be concluded that massive open online course are very helpful to the people who have no time to go for lecturer class in campus but want to broaden their horizon of knowledge.

Will job Exit in Future: at the end of this century

Human beings are doing their work since beginning of ecosystem. Human, being an intelligent creature, has innovated various technology to assist/support its daily life activities. Form the uncivilized history to this modern history, technological advancement has achieved a peak. Now, there is a risk of replacing every activities of human beings by a machine. Everything is in the pipeline of automation. Then the question is obvious that will some jobs for human exits in near future or all job will be taken by machine? The rapid progress in technology has placed this questions to near the reality.

we can see so many machine around us which are doing something useful for us. For instance, if we go to bank, we can deposit cash on smart machine and withdraw cash form the same machine. The machine will automate the task of cashier, so the bank now don't need any cashier for the purpose of only depositing money and withdrawing money. It can't be denied that one day, the whole banking process will get automatized and they will not need any human for banking jobs. If the technology will developed int this respect, sooner then later we will loss our jobs and becomes jobless.

Automation in every field such as education, banking, industry and other field has increased productivity. Now the business house can make more profit with less human resource because most of the jobs are carried out by robots, for example, robots are being used in industry for the purpose of packaging, moving product  form one place to other place etc. But the situation is just opposite if we consider it in case of job creation. 

In conclusion, we can state that the use of technology is necessary in this modern age but  we should be careful about its effects on employment and economy of the nation. It is much crucial for the  populated nation such as china, India and Nepal because they have a heavy workforce which is in need of job.

Let's phase out the Pen and Paper Exam: To evaluate ourself

Examinations are used as tools to evaluate learning output in any kind of training or educational academy. We have been in these systems for many years. Now it is right time to make a debate on this issue whether we are assessing student's skill or learning ability accurately using pen and paper type exams?.

(Picture Source: Daiylmail.co.uk)

The traditional exam has certain advantages. They have the same question to all candidates so it is easy to make equal standard to all candidates. It is also considered more fair then other kind of exam because it provides a clear cut boundary between exam taker and examiner. For example, in our country, the examination conducted by public service commission has good faith form all people. Every one believe that these examination are fair and no one can make favor to any candidate. This is the strong point that many people advocate that formal method of examination are important to evaluate candidate. In addition, these examination can access the different ability of candidate such as reasoning, understating and critical thinking  using different types of questions such as mathematical questions, multiple choice questions and essay type questions.

On the other hand, we can see many demerits on these kind of examinations. It is obvious that one can't measure's someone's ability within a period of three or four hours written examination. Many students couldn't perform well in such exams because of anxiety even though they have good skill and ability.

So, It is very important to take serious steps during the design of test materials whenever possible. Some time test designers only focus on specific area and miss to evaluate overall performance of  candidates. For example, Sometime candidate get passed in some examination but fail to perform well in their duty. It is all because of lacking in evaluation criteria set during examination design. 

In conclusion, we can't totally escape from the traditional pen and paper examination but can make it more scientific using modern tools and technologies. Other assessment techniques  such as presentation, debate competition and writing assignment can be used ti measure the specific ability in a candidate in addition to traditional examination. For example, writing assignment can be designed to measure the independent learning ability and project competition to assess the ability of team work capability.

Public Policy: Affairs In Nepal

Introduction:

A policy is well formed document that describe principles of actions of any organization, government or an individual. A public policy is directly connected with government. It describe the relationship of government with people. Any policy that impact the general public can be considered as public policy. This article will discuss about the different issues on why public policies in Nepal are not implemented well and are not capable of yielding expected output.

(PC: Bucknell University)

Background

First of all, we must go through the source of policy formulation in Nepal. Theoretically, the policies must be formulated on the basis of Constitutional directions and theory, National Program and Plan, to address demands of the public on specific issue, pressure form the civil society etc. But, we can see that polices have not been formulated solely on these bases, they are mostly influenced by the political leader's interest (not form the political party interest), for the benefits of specific group of people (not for the benefits of common people). This is the challenging problem that policies in Nepal are not formulated on the basis of open discussion, taking the voice of common people, participating the stakeholder in the drafting process.

Problems:

On the basis of above mentioned facts, the major problem that most of the policies in Nepal have been never implemented even though they were very good in principle, is the co-ordination gap between different government entity as well as other policy stakeholders. For example, The Boardband policy is prepared by ministry of communication but it impact other sector of governance as well. So the ministry should study other related policy in the field of information communication technology, before drafting any ICT related policy. The broadband and telecom policy have many similar provision as in  Information Technology Policy that has been prepared by Ministry of science and technology.

In Nepal, Policies are formulated in high speed, sometime within one night if it is necessary for the interest of leaders. They never focused on the  collection of information, facts and feedback related to the issue that the proposed policy is going to address. Also the beurocratic high personal sometime mislead leader due to their own career or posting or similar advantages.

On the other hand, we never prioritize the policy and program, that directly impact the later stage. We proposed so many project and program in a single fiscal year and don't complete a single projects within that year. It is all due to the lack of assigning priority and budget to a single/valuable/necessary project. 

The last but not the least, to implement each and every policy, our government don't have sufficient resource, both qualified human resource as well as financial resources. In addition, Nepal is situated in between two giant country: china and India, both are the evolving power of the world, government policies in Nepal are often influenced by external entities such as Neighboring country, International Donner Agency and INGO's.

Conclusion

To come up with these problems, the policy maker should be aware of that how they can increase the participation of stakeholder during the policy formulation process, about the co-ordination between different implementation agency  and availability of resource to implement the policy. Also, the policy makers also need to negotiate with Donner Agency as well as external forces on behalf of Nation's welfare and goodness.

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Vehicles, Pollution and Kathmandu: A common man prospective

Kathmandu is a hub for all kind of affairs: political, education and tourism. It is one and only a metro city in Nepal. People come to this city for the purpose of getting education as most of the college are catered here. they come to this city to get access to government as the most of government services are centered here.The city is being polluted day by day the population is getting more and more and  number of vehicles is increasing. In some aspect it is due to a private vehicles that individual uses for their transportation and the other side, the expansion of water supply pipe by Melamchi Water Project.

 Figure: Air pollution in Kathmandu (source: Kathmandupost.com)

First, the use of private vehicles increases traffic on the road. It takes more time to reach destination due to the loss of time in traffic. We couldn't reach on time to any place and loss most important business meeting or similar things. More people need more vehicles as they are using it for their own private purpose, the number of vehicles increases and it definitely increase the pollution. The best way of reducing pollution is to make a policy that demotivates the use of private vehicles and promotes  public transportation such as bus, metro train or railways.

Secondly, Not only the vehicles are making Kathmandu polluted, the extension of water supply pipeline under the new water supply project inside the Kathmandu valley called Melamchi Water Supply project is causing worst environment in this city. The day to day road digging and expanding under-ground pipeline creates a lot of dust particles and all air in Kathmandu now days is mixed of this dust. Everyone is feeling very uncomfortable in breathing due to this toxic dust contained air. As a result, people are started protesting against this action and demanding the on time management of dust produced during the construction of underground water supply pipelines.

In conclusion, it can be said that we must take care of environment whenever we are lunching any development related project. It is because the most development related project impacts the environment  and creates pollution. we should be much aware that such development project create minimum hazard to environment. The other side to prevent air pollution is to boost good traffic management strategy and reduce the use of private vehicles. In this regards, the government agency should be more focused to create a atomsphere that everyone could use public vehicles for their daily life activities.