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services in IGNOU highlights effective grievance management is very much
use of technology by the university for essential to manage grievances of
internal processes, digital initiatives millions of learners enrolled in the
being provided for learner’s support, Open and Distance Learning (ODL)
challenges faced in implementation of institutions. It is also a fact that learners
technology and best ICT practices being in ODL institutions comes from diverse
followed by the university. He also talks background like some are in jobs,
about the digital initiatives for learners’ some are freshers preparing for the
grievance redressal such as UGC other competitive examinations, some
(University Grants Commission) online are doing one additional ODL course
portal, Public Grievance portal and other in addition to the their regular course
platforms and how these have helped in in other institutions, retired people,
channelizing the learners’ grievances to jail inmates, transgenders, anganwadi
the right place for speedy solutions. workers etc. and it order to facilitate
them to raise query/grievance at the
Das and Biswas (2018) discusses the
current use of ICT in higher education in convenience of their home, it’s of utmost
the developing countries, the advantages importance to have an integrated online
of the ICT tools, and also explores the support system for learners to resolve
learner readiness in these countries to their issues related to their course of
use ICT for learning purposes. They also study.
describe the different types of learner
support services being offered by the Objective of the Study
ODL system and the ICT tools being The main aim of the study is to analyze
used to offer the services. the effectiveness of online grievance
redressal and management systems
Singh and Sahay (2020) analyzed the
queries received through iGRAM at for learners in IGNOU. The specific
IGNOU Regional Centre Delhi-1 and objectives of the study are as follows:
gave recommendations regarding • To study the usefulness
efforts which may be made to minimize of the IGNOU Grievance
the number of queries at iGRAM further. Redressal and Management
They advocated the need to include the (iGRAM) with reference to
Learner Support Centres also in iGRAM demographic variables.
network so that they may be made to • To study use of iGRAM
respond through the network itself mechanism with respect to ICT
and thus the response time will be infrastructure/environment
minimized. They also recommended available with the learners.
creation of some automated response • To study the effectiveness of
systems in iGRAM for general queries iGRAM mechanism in resolving
related to procedures, in order to save learners’ grievances.
time on responses.
Research Methodology
Based upon the above reviews, the
need for comprehensive online A questionnaire based on a 5-point
Likert scale was designed in which 1 was

Indian Journal of Educational Technology 95
Volume 3, Issue 2, July 2021