There have been some success stories globally, such as Coursera and Lynda, but for online education to really work in India, focus has to be on its correct implementation

The ever-growing online education sector is a symbiotic complement to traditional college education today. This is not without reason. Considering the costs and time required for a regular, full-time professional education course, online education offers a meaningful supplement. Online education is popular nowadays for a number of reasons?cost, convenience and efficiency. And for professors, it offers a consistent classroom format.

However, there are a number of rebuttals to this statement such as (1) learning from a teacher has been our culture, and online education has no teacher and hence it will not work for us; (2) online education lacks face-to-face interaction, which is very important in education; (3) unlike in a traditional classroom, students lack discipline while e-learning; and (4) it is difficult to assess the progress of the students while she is e-learning.

So, with the many doubts surrounding it, can online education really be understood to be a viable option? The points mentioned above are generally in the mind of anyone considering an e-learning course. Irrespective of how much technology has developed over time and no matter how much today?s generation may be tech-savvy, when it comes to education, people still prefer to subscribe to the traditional method.

But exceptions do exist. In recent times, there have been some really credible examples of success stories within the online education industry. Coursera, a social entrepreneurship company, has set high standards by providing over 325 courses from 64 of the world?s best universities including University of Edinburgh, Stanford University, Brown University, Georgia Institute of Technology and Duke University, to name a few. These courses are available online and are free of cost. Another such example is Lynda.com. The huge success of this online tutorial portal is an amazing story. They have 1,600 courses and 89,000 tutorials from 150-plus subjects. They have been educating 2 million subscribers globally and had accomplished estimated revenues of $100 million in 2012. This also enabled them to receive a growth capital funding of $103 million in January 2013.

According to a study conducted by IBIS Capital, a London-based investment bank, ?The e-learning market is projected to grow by 23% between now and 2017, making it the fastest-growing market in education.? (See graph.)

If we try and draw a comparison between an instructor-led classroom and e-learning, keeping factors such as quality, pace, access, control and cost as metrics, we will clearly find that e-learning is convenient as it gives the control to the students to study at their own pace and at lower cost. In addition, there are other parameters that can prove the effectiveness of online education:

Interactivity: Online education provides certain features like quizzes, practice tests, puzzles, et al, which make online education interactive and keep a student engaged in the process of studying. These exercises ensure high attentiveness and retention, better knowledge transfer and also enable easier revision.

No baseless learning: Online education makes studying more organised and eliminates baseless and unnecessary digression. Immediate feedback on the concepts makes sure that the student advances to the next concept only after being thorough with the previous one.

Global peer assessment: There are no chances of biased evaluation in online education, which may be the case in face-to-face traditional education. Assessment in online education takes place on a global basis. Evaluating and providing feedback on each other?s knowledge is more powerful than the single teacher?s grading.

Does not replace but complements: Online education is here not to replace the traditional mode of learning. It is a supplement, more like a value addition. A blended model with both methods is more effective than either method alone.

Now, if online education has all the reasons to be the ideal mode of learning, where is the loophole? In all fairness, while there are success stories, online education has seen its share of failures as well. It is in the implementation that this inconsistency lies. In order to make an online education project a success, it is important to understand a few points:

1. A recorded classroom session available online or a PDF version of a book on the web is not the equivalent of online education. Rather you need to clearly identify the objective of the online training course. Is it to impart a particular skill or a tutorial that helps one to pass an examination?

2. Access time is not the only metric to measure. Activities during learning are also important to be measured. One needs to create custom, multimedia interactive content with support questions and quizzes at the end of each module and allow students to advance to subsequent modules subject only to clearing the previous one.

3. A learning management system with online training courses is just a beginning and not the end. Building proper assignments and test papers at the end of each chapter/course to assess their knowledge on the subject is a pre-requisite to a successful online education programme.

To summarise the future of online education, one needs to understand no further than the words of the former Harvard president, Larry Summers: ?It?s important to remember this really wise quote when thinking about the transition to online education: ?Things take longer to happen than you think they will and then they happen faster than you think they could?.?

The author is founder & CEO of Simplilearn. Views are personal