Even since the concept of distance education evolved it has been known to offer several benefits to students who take up such courses. Especially in a country like India Distance education has several benefits to offer. Some of the advantages of students taking up distance education programs or courses are offered below.

In a country which is geographically as huge as India, it might not be possible to construct schools and colleges all over the country in all areas. This is where distance education can be utilized. For students who might not have quality schools or colleges offering the course that the student wants to take up, then the student can take up a correspondence distance education course with another university or college which may be located else where. Hence inspite of being at home, the student will be able to take up a course and also study for it through the distance education program.

There are several students in India who have financial constraints and hence due to these reasons can not take up the full time courses which they might other wise have wished to. For such students the benefits of distance education are immense, for they can take up a distance education course with out having to pay too high a fees and while also having the option of being able to work and earn money thereby helping them make a living. Hence the distance education courses have several benefits to offer to students.

Given below are some of the common distance education related questions or queries that students have. Please go through the questions given below to see if your queries or questions related to distance education have been answered here.

1. What is distance Education?

As the name suggests distance education refers to being able to study or take up a course with out being present physically for the course but being able to take it up through any other medium.

1. What are the advantages of taking up a distance education course?

There are several advantages of taking up distance education related courses. Most of these advantages are already listed on this web site. Kindly go though them.

1. How much is the fees for distance education related courses?

The fees for a distance education program may vary on the basis of the course being taken up and the college or the university through which the course is being taken up. In certain cases, the fees may also be very less or might be completely free.

1. Which courses can be taken up through a distance education programme?

You can take up several distance education courses as long as there is some university or college offering it. Almost all the courses that are offered by colleges on a full time basis are also offered on distance education. Some of the popular courses taken up by students are

1. • Bachelor of commerce
   • Master of commerce
   • Computer science course
   • Master of Business Administration and many more.

In a big nation there is a challenge of developing, distributing and maintaining a technology dependent education is not easy. These kinds of studies improve the education system of a country because a student doesn’t have to attend classes for these kinds of courses. Hence maintaining and distributing distance education was by Distance Education Council (DEC) mainly to specify standards of distance education in India under Indira Gandhi National Open University Act, 1985. DEC is responsible for encouragement and synchronization of distance education system in India. Distance education institute’s courses must be certified and approved by DEC.  This is for betterment of student who can take the courses that are recognized by this kind of standard body.

DEC other than providing the guidelines of the distance education also helps in following functions:

• Supports use of modern technology in education system
• Supplies funds via joint networking
• Resolves the standards of teaching, valuation, and investigation
• Cheers an addition if convenience and innovation in education at university level
• Develops regulations and procedures in respect of admission, certification and evaluation.
• Supports state government to open more institution of higher education and various distance education lessons to make a union of such establishment

Along with this all things DEC also checks with state government and various organizations to find out key areas in which the distance education could be set up. DEC decides criteria for eligibility for the admission. Some flexible and open courses are also promoted by DEC so that normal common man can also do. There is an arrangement of Human Resource in DEC who helps in development of distance education system. Review committees are allocated to study and estimate the acts of various institutes which are under DEC.

For further information please visit the web-site:

http://www.dec.ac.in/

The University for Distance Education is usually situated out of area of the candidate because candidates attempt for these courses only due to the reason of being away from the classes. Hence, the results are not hand headed or personally collected by the students. The students doesn’t have to stand in chaos for the results placed on notice board, neither do they have to stand in queue to collect the mark-sheets.

The results are put up on the web-sites of the various universities in which a student has sought admission in. Sometimes a student is given a Login account where he/ she will receive mails from the universities about the details of exams, score cards, etc. The various results that are usually put on the web-sites are:

• Entrance Examination Results
• Weekend or Timely test results
• In some cases the practical exam results
• Term end examination scorecards
• Post Graduation results
• Revaluation i.e. rechecking results

The different universities and their result web-sites are as follows:

• Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU)
  http://www.ignou.ac.in/results.htm

• Andhra University
  http://www.andhrauniversity.info/sde/results.html

• Yashwantrao Chavan Maharashtra Open University
  http://www.ycmou.com/cms/

• Dr.B.R.Ambedkar Open University
  http://www.braou.ac.in/

• Tamil Nadu Open University, Chennai
  http://www.tnou.ac.in/

• Annamalai University
  http://annamalaiuniversity.ac.in/results/getdegree.php?sys=ous

• Karnataka State Open University (KSOU)
  http://www.ksoumysore.com/

• Nalanda Open University
  http://www.nalandaopenuniversity.com/

• Netaji Subhas Open University
  http://www.wbnsou.com/

A student has to usually enter his enrollment number with the course name and press the button next to the field. A window showing the grades, term marks and the over all total in each and every subject is displayed. The above process is easy because the universities have their particular web sites. If the universities do not have their web sites a person has to visit various links given by their university for results.

In the past few years a large number of people have opted to get educated with the help of the distance education institutes and colleges. This has made distance education very popular and has resulted into an increase in the colleges and institutes offering distance education courses.

A wide variety distance education institutes have mainly been established with the aim of providing education to maximum number of people in the country. These courses have mainly been designed in such a way so as to provide education facilities to students staying in remote areas or wanting to undergo further education.

The distance education courses are also very useful for people who wish to study along with working and fulfilling their family responsibilities. The distance education courses are very affordable and the fees are a lot lesser than the fees of the regular courses.

The admissions for these distance education courses in different institutes are done separately and the admission procedure may vary from college to college. A few of the distance education institutes conduct entrance exams where in a few others have a simple admission procedure. Even though the dates of the admissions vary from institute to institute, most of the admissions happen in the months of either January-February or June-July.

In order to get the information regarding the admission procedure for any particular distance education college, the best thing to do is go and visit the official college website. The college website will give you all that you need to know about the admission procedure, important dates, etc. Another source of getting information regarding admissions in a distance education college is the newspaper.