The National Centre for Innovations in Distance Education (NCIDE) was established in December 2005. It is a facility for promoting, supporting, re-engineering and disseminating innovations in Open and Distance Learning (ODL) system. The NCIDE is a ground for nurturing bright and inquisitive minds whose ideas and explorations are expected to develop the ODL system to suit the needs of Gennext. The Centre's goal is to develop a culture of continued search for new and innovative solutions to offer seamless education for all, achieve cost efficiency in its operations and provide borderless access to quality education and training.

The NCIDE has been successfully developing several cost effective, ICT-based, innovative learning and support solutions for the Open and Distance mode learners. The Centre continuously explores the areas of innovations and takes up research studies in the broad areas of quality indicators, quality assurance mechanisms and benchmarking.

The NCIDE is also actively involved in documentation and dissemination of various innovations in the ODL system to facilitate easy reference by the stakeholders.

The centre is also involved in encouraging creativity and innovation in the ODL system as well as in the capacity building of teachers and learners.

The basic objectives of NCIDE include:

• Providing intellectual, financial and technological support to stakeholders for the growth and development of the ODL system.
• Encouraging innovations in ODL through collaborations within the University and other institutions in India and abroad for re-engineering and sustaining the open and distance learning.
• Promotion and developing innovative learning solutions through emerging technologies and working as resource centre for prototype development of innovative solutions.
• Conducting research studies for exploring the areas of innovation in ODL and to suggest workable solutions, thus, providing research based framework and guidelines for standardization and total quality management of all facets of the ODL system.
• Documentation and dissemination of the innovations and best practices in the ODL system.
• Capacity building of the ODL functionaries for innovations in ODL and creating and environment for innovations.
• Developing a network of innovative individuals, institutions and industry dedicated to R&D in ODL system.
• Development of innovative programmes, guidelines, mechanism and modalities for convergence of different systems of education for seamless access.