Abstract:

In the Indian context, personal contact programmes (PCPs) are considered as significant academic input in the distance and open learning system of education, especially in situation of non-availability of high technical and audio-video support to the learners. It is a big question in the distance / open learning system: Whether attendance in PCPs, especially for professional courses like teacher training, should be made compulsory to the distance learners or not? The clientele for teacher training are usually inservice due to which they could not attend PCPs regularly. An experimental study was undertaken at the Centre of Distance Education, University of Kashmir which provided two Personal Contact Programmes each of 30 days duration at B.Ed. level in two consecutive winter breaks, and 75% of the attendance in PCPs was kept compulsory for the teacher trainees in order to get relevant counselling/tutoring support from the subject experts. It was found that the trainees did not turn up to PCPs while the programmes were on ~n various study centres. The study examines the impact of trainees' attendance on their achievement in various aspects of' their professional tralning course. The present study also indicated a positive correlation befween face-to-face contact programmes and performance of the learners especially in the training programmes. Furthermore, it gives a detailed description of the attendance and the achievement of the sample group ill four core papers offered by the University of Kashmir.