A STUDY ON USE OF INFORMATION COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY IN HIGHER EDUCATION IN THANJAVUR DISTRICT

India has one of the biggest systems of education with a total enrolment of 189.2 million, with 81.1 million girl students and 5.45 million teachers in schools, nearly 10 million students in 350 universities and 15,000 colleges and 420,000 teachers. This includes 11 open universities and 104 distance education institutions of dual mode; and the Open University system has an enrolment of about 20 percent of the total. The rate of growth since Independence is quite high, coverage has increased, dropout rate has reduced, and the percentage of girl students in education is increasing. Information Communication Technology (ICT) is potentially a powerful tool for extending educational opportunities and can provide remote learning resources. ICT encourage students to take responsibility for their own learning and offers problem centered and inquiry based learning which provides easy access and information based resources. It is necessary to acquire the ability to use technology as a tool to research, organize, evaluate and communicate information and the possession of the fundamental understanding of the ethical or legal issues and use of information. Today knowledge of networking, communication and retrieval technologies has become core to the profession. It is believed that the use of ICT in education can increase access to learning opportunities. It can help to enhance the quality of education with advanced teaching methods, improve learning outcomes and enable reform or better management of education systems.