Teachers are ‘irreplaceable’ even in digital age

Hyderabad: Prof. Furqan Qamar, former Vice-Chancellor, University of Rajasthan, has said that varsities will harbour digital spaces, but this will not sound the death knell of the brick-and-mortar universities.

Despite digitalisation of education and availability of open educational resource (OER) material, physical presence of teachers will continue to be necessary in classrooms’.

He was speaking at the inaugural session of a two-week refresher course in library science attended by more than 60 participants. It is being organised 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 future libraries will have to help students and faculty members distinguish between information and knowledge and enable them convert, he added.

Earlier, Dr Akhtar Pervez, university librarian, spelt out the course objectives. ‘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.