| UCP students’
Intranet is management’s response to the onset
of the digital paradigm and its impact on technical
education, especially on information technology
and management sciences. Most text books are becoming
obsolete before they are brought into print! Technical
information is undergoing a universal explosion
and Moor’s law is ensuring that what is most
modern today in computers is obsolete after 18 months.
Therefore, the only way to keep abreast of international
developments is that knowledge is dissipated fast
to students, often before it even hits the market.
This is only possible where the faculty as well
as the student population of an educational institution
couples itself directly to the Internet and the
cyberspace. Technical education is no longer an
activity involving understanding and retaining a
given set of books or knowledge – it is far
more than this. It is a continuous research and
development effort in a hoard of new hard and soft
technologies emerging virtually every day. This,
along with the advancements in digital communications,
requires that the contact between students and their
teachers is (i) efficient, (ii) continuous, and
(iii) asynchronous. This new continuous asynchronous
educational paradigm requires that all students
remain in persistent touch with their professors
as well as enormous technical sources of knowledge
available around the globe and round the clock.
UCP intranet has been designed just to achieve that.
It is in fact only one of the two new technical
legs being created at UCP.
The first is a strong communications and information
interchange network and the second is an environment
of ongoing research and development at all levels
and departments of the university. The UCP intranet
consists of Teachers’ Knowledge Portals, Student’s
electronic Pigeon Holes, electronic library access
over digitized multimedia source of information
and free electronic access to global material over
the Internet. In addition to this it provides a
convenient and effective interaction between students
and their respective professors, tutors and advisors.
It joins students homes with classes and college
on a 24 hour basis as well as teachers with their
students on an asynchronous but continuous basis.
Through this network of information a student remains
in continuous touch with his/her entire course work,
scheme of studies, assignments, continuous evaluations
and assessment of individual’s performance.
Some of the special features of this information
network are planned to be electronic asynchronous
Difficulty/Enquiry Box, an FAQ box, Mutual Help
Desk for all major courses rendered in the university.
The management of UCP has already connected all
its colleges and activity centers through wireless
and wide area communications network, has installed
all the computer equipment in the central communications
hub, acquired all the Bandwidth required for intra
and Internet communications.
This way each student, lecturer, professor and
research fellow of UCP is connected to the network
from home or office over LAN, Broadband or Telephone
lines. The software is under continuous development
and implementation bringing in new facilities to
all connected to the intranet. The most important
thing in this setup is perhaps that all this vast
network of communications and knowledge based facilities
are absolutely free to all students of UCP..
The PGCNet Support Team
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