LAHORE, April 27: The Punjab University is planning to launch distance and online learning programme in selected disciplines from September this year to facilitate more and more students at home and abroad within a minimum cost.

The university officials believe that it is very costly to set up sub-campuses to facilitate students living in different districts of Punjab.

The PU deans committee, chaired by vice-chancellor Arshad Mahmood on Friday, held an initial brainstorming session and discussed pros and cons of the programme.

It is learnt that the deans were of the view that the PU’s distance and online learning programme should not be identical to the programmes being offered by the Virtual University and the Allama Iqbal Open University.

The university officials said it would try to develop a mix of distance and online learning that would offer students higher education through CDs, books and live lectures from regular on-campus classes.

For this purpose, the university would develop cyber classes on the campus. In the long run, it could also plan to launch its own satellite.

It would register prospective students online. These students would neither be called private students nor on-campus students. The online students would study prescribed courses at home, listen to lectures through multimedia equipment. The students enrolled online from Punjab would also be called on the university campus once a month to develop bond with the university.

The meeting also discussed that the launch of the programme would attract some 25,000 students from different districts in Punjab as well as different countries.