Leveraging on its impeccable expertise in the space segment, Indian Space Research Organization has ventured into becoming a full-fledged facilitator in providing the satellite for education in India under its ambitious EDUSAT project. ISRO in a way is exposing the universities to new opportunities that distance learning technologies could offer for institutions of higher education. These opportunities include facilitating improvements in the teaching-learning process, expanding the geographic reach of an institution’s programs and facilitating more effective service of the student community. The real education, however, requires interaction between the students and the teachers. This project will play an important role in higher education sector in India more so in engineering and in medical education. The proposal of providing talk-back facility with two-way video over a period of time by ISRO would surely address the important issue of paucity of faculty in higher education. In general, the EDUSAT programs would supplement the present teaching system all over the nation. It gives the university community a great deal of opportunity in employing EDUSAT network in the teaching-learning process thereby the “best of breed” could be expected from every educational institution. Over the last few years, Distance Education has come into its own as the mainstay in the field of education. The integration of satellite technology and education has yielded rich rewards socially, culturally and economically, to name just a few. It being a truism that education has its own reward for any society; distance education has also been a boon in a more specific sense to educational institutions themselves as it allows extremely useful contact across national and international borders. This is especially true in the present context, for online education that is transforming knowledge-delivery processes and ‘virtual education’. The recently arrived e-learning has caused world over profound changes in the way people learn and train, allowing them to do it anywhere, at any time. Through the web a user can access content from any point, off campus or in campus, through a computer and connectivity medium. Web is being used for delivering more extensive content on a particular course. The EDUSAT technology allows asynchronous delivery of various kinds of data presentations including PowerPoint presentations, server-hosted digital data, still pictures and graphical information.

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the use of front line space based communication technologies in the field of education and development. It has envisaged development of nationwide education network called EDUSAT with the aim of providing a sustainable Distance Education service in India using GSAT-3 satellite. The major advantages of satellite-based Distance Education include:·

• Simultaneous delivery of lecture sessions to a large number of geographically dispersed people in the shortest time

• Uniformity of the lecture content

• Access to the subject expert and his/her lecture material

• Repeatability of delivery of lectures from the archives

• Capability to share the same network by different user groups

• Significant savings in expenditure due to economies in travel, logistics and replication of teaching infrastructure

• Sharing of teaching and learning resources across colleges

• Providing a level playing ground for students

• Improving quality of teaching-learning processes

• Providing a platform for VTU to collaborate with other universities

• Providing online examination

• Facilitating e-management and e-library

• Bridges gaps in availability of quality teaching resources

• Improves the quality of learning content and resources delivered to students

• Encourages faculty to play a proactive role in content creation, student mentoring, assessment creation and delivery

• A powerful tool to build question banks, quizzes and assessments

• Empower teachers to direct the teaching-learning process in the college

• Enables peer group interaction and collaboration with external agencies – enhanced learning opportunities for teachers

• Provides self-directed, self-paced, anytime, anywhere learning

• Possibility of self-assessment and benchmarking

• Become part of a larger “learning community”

• Availability of skilled manpower

• Opportunity of partnering with university in the education process

• Honeyman, M.; Miller, G. (December 1993). "Agriculture distance education: A valid alternative for higher education?". Proceedings of the 20th Annual National Agricultural Education Research Meeting: 67-73.

 ^ Tabor, Sharon W. (Spring 2007). "Narrowing the Distance: Implementing a Hybrid Learning Model". Quarterly Review of Distance Education (IAP) 8 (1): 48-49. ISSN 1528-3518. http://books.google.com/books?id=b46TLTrx0kUC. Retrieved 23 January 2011.