Distance Education and Its Obscurities : Addressing the 'Inaccessibility' Conundrum In Mathematics and Other Disciplines

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Dr. Kajal De is in the position of Professor of Mathematics in the School of Sciences of Netaji Subhas Open University for more than twelve years and has been instrumental in maintaining the high academic standards of undergraduate and post graduate courses in Mathematics at NSOU. She is presently the Director, School of Sciences for the third term and looks after the academic affairs including the revision of syllabi and teaching-learning processes of all the science subjects offered by the University. She acted as Registrar of NSOU for a short period and was Director of Internal Quality Assurance Cell (IQAC) of the University. After graduation from Presidency College, Kolkata, she did her master's, M.Phil and Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from the University of Calcutta. She served a long span of about fifteen years at Vidyasagar University before joining NSOU.

Besides teaching and administration, Dr. De has been keenly interested in research activities. Her areas of research are Information Theory, Operations Research, Graph theory and Open Distance Learning. She has authored a number of research papers in reputed peer- reviewed international journals. She is also a co-editor of 'Gender Sensitization, Women Empowerment and Distance Education: History, Society and Culture' (Kolkata: 2014) and 'Women, Violence and Law: An Intimate Interrogation'- Volume II & II (Kolkata: 2015 & 2016).

It gives me immense pleasure that the School of Sciences, Netaji Subhas Open University has taken initiative to publish an Edited Volume on 'Distance Education and its Obscurities: Addressing the "Inaccessibility" Conundrum in Mathematics and Other Disciplines' in sequel of the UGC-DEB sponsored National Conference on the same title held on 9th June, 2018 at the Netaji Subhas Open University.

I was glad to be a part of the conference that was organized very nicely. This edited volume amasses the presented views of the scholars as well as few excellent articles of experts in the field in the format of a book. The feature that makes this book stand distinctively from the rest is the amalgamation of chapter on ODL with Mathematics.

The fact that mathematics somehow dictates our lives has been aptly applied in this venture. Mitigating the challenges faced by ODL can be expediently solved through mathematical modeling and approaches. I really hope that this book opens up new dimensions in the field of research for both Educationists and Mathematicians.

Distance Education formally started its journey way back in 1858 at the University of London and in our country, it began with the establishment of the first Open University in 1982. Inaccessibility, seems not only to be a problem for ODL institutes, rather it remains a challenge for the regular conventional educational institutes as well. However, it is important to note that the very objective of the ODL institutes is to make education accessible to those, who otherwise remain deprived of higher education due to an array of constraints. Hence, physical inaccessibility, or to state in broader terms, psychological inaccessibility in itself poses a challenge for institutions with a motto of 'reaching the unreached'.