Dr. Santosh Panda, has been a professor of distance education since 1997 at the Staff Training and Research Institute, Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU), India, started university teaching in 1984. He was the former Director of STRIDE, IGNOU, and Chairperson of NCTE, and is currently a National Fellow at NIEPA. An Economics graduate, he has an MPhil and PhD (Education), a Certificate in EdTV (BBC, UK), a Certificate in Online Learning (University Maryland), and a Fulbright Post-doctorate (UNM, USA). During the past 35 years of teaching, research and administration career, Dr. Panda has extensively worked in areas of educational planning and economics of education; higher education planning, management and accreditation; open, distance, online and blended learning; and teacher education. Dr. Panda’s past and current research areas include international student mobility, costing of higher education and distance education, virtual research, models of instructional design and course development, student dropout, employability and career mobility, programme evaluation, online research resources, self-regulated learning, OER, open education practices, teacher education, open schooling, TNA, networking and partner institutions, planning and management in distance education.