E-learning: the new wave on education front

Font Size

Print

Feedback

Email

Discuss

• Discount UK Shopping

New Delhi, May 16: A student in remote Orissa village taking his MBA exams from a Mumbai university using broadband network; American students taking Maths lessons from teachers sitting in New Delhi or people from across the globe doing a crash course on disaster management from Honolulu university. The power of information technology is using learning tools to make it happen anywhere and anytime.

Called e-learning, it uses multimedia and internet to enable learning process. While the West, especially the European Union has embarked on e-learning bandwagon to realise the dream of making Europe a knowledge-based economy by 2010, in countries like India it is only the private initiatives which have started, though the concept is catching up, say experts.

“E-learning is an established concept in the West. But in India, while decision makers are convinced of its benefits, there is no single experience yet to say it is successful,” says NIIT senior vice-president Nicholas George.

However, he says, private initiatives — both at the university level and in corporate world have started, which are showing good results. “But one thing is for sure, e-learning is bound to happen.

There is no other way to succeed in making a knowledge-based society. Infrastructure needs to be developed at the grassroots level and things will then get going,” says Mr George.

A big challenge in e-learning is the low retention rate. While in the West the dropout rate is above 70% even today compared to 20% in physical learning, in countries like India it is likely to be above 85%, he says citing “language skills and financial constraint as the main reason for high dropout rate”.

However, Reliance Webworld CEO Sarup Chowdhury, a staunch supporter of e-learning says, “There are no constraints of brick and mortar and it can be put to very wide use, not only for regular graduation courses, but also for professional courses like MBA and engineering.”

The retention and success rate to a large extent depends on the model of e-learning being used, he says. “Interactive, classroom-based learning can ensure greater success. A virtual classroom is an accepted model all over the world.”

Citing his experience, he says they have launched the first ever PG certificate programme in business management in collaboration with a technical institute. “The methodology, though involving e-learning, would be as good as physical one as the broadband infrastructure being used would be as close to real classroom learning as it can get.”