The university organizes regular face-to-face contact sessions at the study centres with the help of counsellors, whom the university appoints on a contractual part-time basis. Approximately 6500 Academic Counsellors, engaged from among the teachers working in the host institutions, assist in the tutorial services provided for all the programmes offered by the University.
Face-to-face Contact Sessions
The face-to-face contact sessions relate to course units, and academic content of different programmes. Face-to-face contact sessions are held on a fixed number of Sundays in each academic year, that is, for 24 hours per semester for optional subjects for the first-year undergraduate programme. For the third-year undergraduate programmes, the contact sessions are held for 48 hours per course per semester. The students of First year B.Sc. programmes are provided with 24 hours of laboratory practical training for each course per semester, of which time is allotted for hands-on experiments and for demonstrations and videotaped experiments. In the third year of B.Sc. programme 48 hours are allotted per optional subject per semester. A total number of 192 hours are allocated for laboratory experiments for six semesters for one optional subject in science. B.Sc. students are required to pay an additional fee towards the lab fee for practical training.
The schedule of contact sessions is communicated to students by individual letters sent from the student services branch at headquarters. As well, the study centre coordinators give wide publicity about the programmes through local newspapers. Attendance is not compulsory for the face-to-face contact sessions. But, attendance is compulsory for science practical training. The science students are not allowed to sit the examinations if they do not have a minimum of 75% attendance in the practical sessions.
The majority of the learners are consistently rural consistently rural background. The total number of rural learners in the academic year 2021-22 were 74,216 learners compared to 46,570 of the total number of urban learners. This shows primarily that the University has a rural base. Out of 1,25,463 total learners enrolled for 2021-22 academic year 57,174 are women students. The number of women getting enrolled in different programmes is on the rise compared to their male counterparts specially in programmes like M.A. English (2441), M.Sc. Maths (1865) , M.A. Telugu (1071) in 2021-22.