Welcome to NSOU Open Journal

/ Open Journal - 1^st Issue (January 2018)

Vol. : 1

No. : 1

ISSN : 2581-5415

From the Desk of the Vice-Chancellor

It is my pleasure to state that the School of Professional Studies (SPS), Netaji Subhas Open University has taken initiative to publish a scholarly interdisciplinary online journal – NSOU OPEN JOURNAL. It marks the beginning of the University to reach the global academic fraternity. The School of Professional Studies of the University always takes innovative initiatives for the development of research and advancement of knowledge in the related field through seminars, conferences/ workshops. I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate my colleagues at SPS, NSOU for this unique academic endeavour for publishing the online journal.

I am sure that the NSOU OPEN JOURNAL would give a platform to the researchers/ practitioners to exchange their views, ideas and thoughts on the contemporary issues of interdisciplinary areas in the field of commerce, management, education, library and information science, social work etc. in days to come.

I express my best wishes to this scholarly effort.

(Professor Subha Sankar Sarkar)
Vice-Chancellor

Table of Content

From the Desk of Editor

In India, open and distance learning has become a formidable force in increasing access and equity in higher education of the country. The mission and vision of distance education like reaching the unreached actually conveys the message of inclusive education which may cut across the barriers of caste, creed, gender and also the urban-rural or poor-reach divide. Netaji Subhas Open University, founded in the 1997 on the auspicious occasion of the birth centenary of Netaji Subhas Ch. Bose, has come to occupy a prominent position in the arena of higher education with nearly 4.15lakh learners scattered throughout the State of West Bengal. The School of Professional Studies of the University, apart from its regular academic activities, frequently organizes seminars/ conferences on contemporary issues of different subject domain. It is a matter of pride that NSOU-OPEN JOURNAL is being published by a School of the University for the first time in the history of NSOU on multidisciplinary subjects. The University has adopted institutional OER policy for its various publications. Accordingly, all the academic content will also be released as OER in our OER repository with CC-BY-NC-SA license. In the 1st issue we could accommodate only eight papers which have been reviewed by our eminent experts in their respective domain.

The first two papers are based on goods and services tax (GST) which belong to the commerce discipline. The introduction of GST is biggest ever tax reform in the indirect tax system in India. The authors of these papers have tried to find out the impact of the GST on two different segments viz. one on two-wheeler market and another on the lifestyle of the individual.

In the 21st century the teaching-learning process is not confined within the four walls of a classroom. Due to advent of information and communication technology (ICT) we have to redefine/ restructure our old age teaching-learning process. ICT helps the inclusion into the education system for mass. Today the open and distance education learners are able to communicate with their teachers and counsellors as frequently as they wish to, through the use of ICT. Dr. Nisha Singh has tried to show how the mobile app helps in changing attitude of learning style of the learners in the present day.

Mr Arunava Samanta has made a very interesting study on ICT and Academic Integrity at Secondary Level. In his paper Mr. Samanta has highlighted various means of dishonesty at secondary level education system and their effect on the system.

Dr. Karen Ferreira-Meyers in her case study has highlighted the importance of Open Educational Resources (OER) in the Teaching and Learning of Languages in University of Swaziland. OER has the potential to reach wider audience with quality content free of cost. The quality of the OER may be continuously improved with the appropriate CC license.

Dr Ajmal and Dr. Hina in their paper assessed the impact of co-worker support on the motivation of the employees as well as compared the co-worker support and motivation on the basis of sector and gender of both public and private sector universities in the Punjab province of Pakistan.

Ms. Lina Gurung in her case study described how the improvement in administration can increase access of students in ODL Teacher Education Program.

Tasrun Jahan, Md. Mizanoor Rahman and Professor Santosh Panda have highlighted their research outcome on the learners in respect of assessment on the Quality of Self-Learning Materials of BBS Programme at Bangladesh Open University.

We take this opportunity to thank all the contributors without whose contributions this issue would not have been possible. We are extremely grateful to Professor Subha Sankar Sarkar, Vice-Chancellor, Netaji Subhas Open University, for his overall guidance, valuable suggestions and continuous support for this publication. We express our sincere thanks to all those who directly or indirectly helped at various stages, whose names are not included here, but without their moral support and well wishes the first issue of this journal could not have taken the final shape.

We are sure that the readers from different parts of the world will find this online journal very useful in understanding the contemporary issues on different subjects. There might have some gaps or omissions in our efforts and we welcome the readers to send their views and observations to help us in all of our future academic endeavours.

(Professor Anirban Ghosh)
Editor