About the lecturer: Santosh Panda, PhD, is a professor of distance education since 1997 and former director at the Staff Training and Research Institute, Indira Gandhi National Open University, India. In the past, he has been: a Senior Fulbright Scholar, University of New Mexico, USA; Director, Association of Indian Universities (AIU); Founding Director, Inter-University Consortium (IUC) for ICT, IGNOU; and Director, Centre for Flexible & Distance Learning, University of the South Pacific, Fiji.