Chennai: The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) is planning to introduce an academic elective paper in Mass Media for Class XI and XII from the academic year 2012. The course is likely to be included in the syllabus as a vocational stream and it will be an elective paper. Once the course gets introduced, the books would be distributed in July.

The course was included on a pilot basis in some schools in Delhi, Mumbai and Pune last year for enabling students to understand the history of mass media and turning them media-literate.

Caitanya Chinchilkar, vice-president, business development, Whistling Woods International (WWI) that has collaborated with CBSE in training and offering the course said that students can analyze the messages depicted by the media by studying this course.

Vineet Joshi, Chairman, CBSE said that language teachers of Class XI and XII will be provided a training programme at WWI.

Mr. Chinchilkar also informed that besides the trained faculty members, schools would also require some basic facilities such as computer labs to conduct the classes and handycam.

Subhas Ghai, founder and chairman of WWI said that entertainment and media is a serious business which requires a lot of talented and qualified individuals. Ignored traditionally, but now it has been given the industry status. He further added that the course will also help students enhance their aesthetic sense and become ideators.