Interview with Prof. A.M. Sherry, Director, IMT Centre for Distance Learning, Ghaziabad

A technolgy buff, Dr. A.M. Sherry,Director IMT CDL belives in providing students the best possible resources so that the gap between regular and distance learning goes down drastically. Read on to find out more

Q. How mature do you think is the MBA Distance Learning market and the dynamics involved and what is the position of IMT?
A. As far as the position is concerned, recently we have received the best B-school in distance learning award. I am just back from Mumbai after having received this. No doubt we are number 1 in this field. Unfortunately, however, as far as the perception and rankings are concerned, there is lot of scope which needs to be filled by magazines such as yours because people are still confused about from where to do an MBA in Distance learning.

Q. Before that we need to answer whether MBA is effective in the distance learning mode?
A. In the present scenario, the requirement is totally different. Earlier this was a part of the main campus, a very small department.  e)Placements etc.
Basically the distance learning program is for working professionals. Now what we have done, which no one else is doing in India, we have provided the online library facility. I will show you just now how we are doing it. Our model is totally different. Second is the study material. That also I will show you, it is known as Self Instruction Manual (SIM). Third is the interaction with the faculty. Interaction means we have approx. 75 study centres across the country and we are conducting classes on weekends. For example, you are working with this media house, if you have to do a program, what factors will you see? That’s why we interact with people from the industry. The general feeling of the working professional is that my first priority is my job. Second priority is my family. Third priority my career graph. Another thing is the library, supposing the student needs a book, he used to come all the way from Gurgaon to Ghaziabad just to collect some study material. Again it was a very taxing and time consuming process. That is why we created the online library so that there is no need to come from your city to here for accessing the library, you can do it online. This includes both books as well as journals. The interesting thing is that though we started it for distance learning, even our full time students are interested in this facility because this is very convenient.  

Q. How many books are there?
A. We have 10,000+ management related books and the best thing is that we are updating this on a weekly basis, i.e. flushing out the ld books and inserting the latest books.

Q.How are you creating the soft copy of the books?
A. There is a U.S. based company which take the license from the relevant publishers and we are paying its cost on a per user basis. There is a complete process by which the royalty is also paid to the author and to the publisher etc.

Q. Second is the faculty base.
A. Now earlier what used to be the trend was that for each subject, the student used to be handed over the syllabus and three books that this is the course material and separately the assignment used to be given to be submitted by a due date which would be followed by an exam. The student used to waste a lot of time searching through the syllabus and the book. Now we have made it very systematic, here is the syllabus along with the page nos. where to find it in the study material. Also. We have provided the space alongside the material to make notes. Then after every three pages, we have two questions by answering which you can “check your progress” and ensure that you are understanding well.  Then, assignments, case studies, it is all a part of the book. The best part is, we are revising this study material on a semester basis, every six months it is reviewed. The addition of new case studies, new software and tools available in the market.

Q. Where do you source your case studies from?
A. From different sources, for example some popular case studies we have in the library itself which are from Harvard, Wharton Kellogg etc. Some Indian case studies our faculty members are collecting from different sources. Our students who go for full time project work in a company are also preparing these case studies. After that there is a proper expert review committee. For each study material module, there is an author, a reviewer and then an expert committee for the area.
We observed people in industry want to upgrade their qualification, want to do Ph.D. etc. but hesistate due to

• Paucity of time
• Locational disadvantage

You can interact on weekends, rest interaction with guide, through a co-supervisor also, through Webex. You can share views, documents, etc.

We have added a new program related to taxation. Major jobs of all CAs is filing returns. So lets have a course on taxation itself. We found  out the only good publisher is Taxman and there are only two experts: one is Prof. Singhania (prof. at SRCC), and second is Prof. Daate(CA, professional). Again made possible through Webex as travelling is an issue.

Q. How frequent are classes?
A. 8 hrs. either on Saturday or Sunday. The software has a feature of recording also for the student who can record the lecture and view it later.

Q. Admission test?
A. We have a separate admission test for distance learning on the same pattern as that of CAT etc.
We also focus on personality development which is very important. What we have done is we have added a paper called “Workbook and presentation” Students have to continuously prepare workbooks (latest happenings in the area) and give presentations in front of our faculties at the study centres. It helps to judge communication skills, business approach, personality etc. is achieved through this.
In a country like India, there is a tremendous demand for management education through the distance mode. The only thing that is required is quality.

Q. What about placements?
A. Most of our students are working professionals and do not need placement services. However, for the others we do have a placement cell which assists. For e.g. we have companies which approach us that we have a requirement for 100-200 students etc.

Q. How is your material developed?
A. We have 25 full time faculty and in addition we take help from other faculty like external experts  also as required. But there is a proper review committee for reviewing the material. First the material is written by a subject expert, thene there is a reviewer. Supposing the reviewer has not given favorable comments then there is another reviewer. Then there is a board. Then after implementation, there is a feedback from the student and feedback from the faculty teaching that course.