Oxford University Press to launch 3 digital programmes

New Delhi: Oxford University Press is launching this year three major programmes, mostly for school children in India, by using the digital platform. The Press’s Indian division is 103 years old and has a unique plan to get a stronger foothold in the Indian market.

"We have three main programmes on the digital platform – Oxford Educate Premium, Oxford Achievers and My Map which we are launching soon," says Ranjan Kaul, Managing Director of OUP India. Oxford Educate Premium is a digital aid that integrates an e-book with interactive tools and learning materials.

It incorporates a variety of resources: interactive animations, videos, poem and prose animations and audios for different courses, instructional slide shows, lesson plans, answer keys, additional worksheets, image references and much more. Oxford Achievers is a web-based assessment programme that will help in measuring the impact of a teaching-and-learning process.

"This is a diagnostic tool. It was successfully used in Hong Kong and now customised in India. We have pilot tested it in about 10 schools and have got positive feedback," Kaul told. "My Map is being used in the UK and we are customising the product to the Indian curriculum. It is also an online product and uses simple animation," he says.

With methods of learning changing and children becoming more visual learners, he says the teaching methods have to undergo changes so that they become adaptable to the learning. Kaul sees digitisation as an opportunity and not as a challenge. "We are content developers. Print is a vehicle to deliver that content. Digital is an equally good vehicle and even a better vehicle," he says.

Two of OUP's popular products - Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary and Oxford School Atlas - have completed 100 years. Advanced Learner's Dictionary is still popular in India. It is a very useful learning tool. We have been changing the format and design of this dictionary so as to help users, like helping people in writing," Kaul says.

The Atlas had its 34th edition printed recently. "We have our own cartography team now. Our 34th edition incorporates the new state of Telangana following the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh," Kaul says. The adult ELT segment is another market opportunity that OUPI is pursuing, where it shall leverage its traditionally strong English and dictionary portfolio.

Kaul says that the Adult English Language Teaching and Learning programme will now be made much more focused. "We will come out with oral communication materials in 12 languages. We recently came out with a book on vocational skills for nurses called 'Practical English for Nurses.' Nursing is a profession where one needs English proficiency and good communication and this is a useful book in this direction," he says.

OUP is a department of the University of Oxford and has played a key role in the varsity's work since its first published work in 1586. It publishes more than 6,000 new resources annually across the academic and educational spectrum. OUP India has long been an important publishing centre for the press.

From its first locally published book in 1912, it has expanded its output to include a wide range of educational and academic resources – from scholarly works and higher education textbooks to school courses, bilingual dictionaries, and digital resources for teaching-learning. It has already initiated a business plan called Global Academic India which is an organisational structure for OUP's academic publishing in India.