Rajiva Wijesinha

“ Incorporating electronic material with a modicum of care will not rouse suspicion, in a context in which we are not careful enough in checking on learning. To give you yet another anecdote, I found a few months back a candidate for promotion proudly bringing along a Masters Thesis, from Colombo University, which it turned out on questioning he did not understand. ”

“ So massive amounts of money are being provided, to universities and to suppliers, and doubtless to others too involved in the business, to multiply the number of computers at university, and to increase connectivity. The UGC has instituted a Project, with a highly paid Consultant, to develop internet access - the result was that, for an introductory course in Current Affairs, the team turned up at Sabaragamuwa with pages and pages on the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis that they had downloaded for our benefit. ”

“ It is even more serious now that sources of information are multiplying so rapidly. Unless we give our students access to these they will be left behind, a fate that is increasingly disastrous in an increasingly globalized world. ”

“ But leaving aside the question of combating plagiarism, we should address most seriously the question of how we could develop the reading habit amongst our students. Of course we need to start young, and for this purpose we are trying, in revising the Secondary School curriculum, and materials to implement it, to introduce simple reference exercises in as many subjects as possible. ”

“ The world, as we have noted here, is open to us even more widely than before as a result of recent technological advances. However we have to make an active effort to ensure that our students can use these opportunities. I do hope that you will take the lead in this respect, to ensure that academics involved in teaching enter into a partnership with you to ensure that their students benefit as they did in the past from the vast world of books, electronic and in print. ”

“ When I brought this to the attention of the World Bank official who was supposed to monitor this project, he said rather lamely that he could not understand how this had escaped his attention. I m afraid he is not alone in not really exercising with regard to government money which is everybody's money and therefore nobody's the care we would exercise if the funds expended were our own. ”

“ Funding was made available from the Presidents Fund, through the UGC, to encourage academics to produce simplified textbooks that would then be published commercially by established publishers. Such texts were to be targeted at first year undergraduates and also Advanced Level students who might want to read in simple English material that they hoped to study in depth later at university. ”