The three-day international conference on ‘Blended Learning Ecosystem for Higher Education in Agriculture 2023’, which was jointly hosted recently by the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) and the World Bank, has come out with a ‘Delhi declaration’.
The declaration stresses the need to strengthen digital infrastructure, including e-learning content, and deployment of emerging immersive technologies across agricultural higher education institutions in India.
The conference was held as part of the National Agricultural Higher Education Project’s (NAHEP) Resilient Agricultural Education System (RAES) development initiative.
A statement said that the ‘Delhi declaration’ on the modernisation of the agricultural education system, in alignment with the National Education Policy, highlights the need to incorporate digital resources and tools for effective and accessible teaching and learning in agriculture.
It lays emphasis on creating a renewed and resilient system for gender-inclusive and sustainable agriculture education sector. Multidisciplinary technology-facilitated education should be promoted and the policies on science, technology, engineering, agriculture and mathematics (STEAM) in agricultural higher education need to be transformed, the declaration said.
Quoting RC Agrawal, Deputy Director General (Agricultural Education) of ICAR and National Director of NAHEP, the statement said the three-day international conference saw around 19 keynote speakers and panel discussions on six important topics focusing on blended learning in agriculture.
Auguste Tano Kouame, Country Director, the World Bank, said more than 5,000 students receive PhDs in India every year, which is more than anywhere else in the world. “We will continue working with the ICAR and the Government of India to disseminate new technologies so that all states of the country can benefit equally from them,” Kouame said.
NAHEP is a five-year project initiated in 2018 with equal contribution of $82.5 million (about ₹600 crore) each from the World Bank and the Central government, it said. The purpose of NAHEP is to transform agricultural higher education. The ‘Blended Learning Platform’ is part of the project, it said.