Friday, September 7, 2007

E-Learning

Education is the root of growth of any economy; especially in developing countries like India still many people are uneducated and as a result remain unaware of the growth and opportunities around them. We find that education is costly and moving ahead for higher education is even costlier, so major portion of masses remain uneducated and lot many learners have to quit their education half way. With fast growth of Internet, technology and multimedia the world has come closer and provided us with numerous benefits over the older technologies and learning techniques, maintaining learner’s interest and providing extensible, rich learning experiences with integration of physically separated.

Learning has become easier; distance is no longer a barrier. Compared to classroom learning, online learning is cheaper, easily available and accessible with rich resources. Those who desire to learn but don’t have enough to spend, need not worry; many institutions are offering online education. Present survey shows that worldwide industry of e-learning is worth 38 billion euros. E-learning i.e. Electronics Learning is computer enhanced learning that helps you enhance quality of your education by providing more resources online and broadens your knowledge base. E-learning is basically focusing and targeting 5 major sectors - consulting, content, technologies, services and support sectors.

Why e-learning is most preferred choice these days for imparting knowledge, training or teaching in schools, universities, companies, industries, and enterprise or business groups?? E-learning market focuses on e-learning assets, e-learning objects, flexible e-learning content creation and platform integration services. E-learning has defined no technological boundary or platform for learning practices so this ultimately provides best knowledge management solutions for spreading knowledge. With technology arbitrating knowledge and learning, education industry is has seen a steep growth. E-learning solutions are web deployable-effective contents that provide flexibility in delivery, reporting and management. Example, 2006 survey figures that nearly 1000 million videos were downloaded everyday by Youtube visitors. Let us discuss types of e-learning:

Virtual classroom is a kind of distributed learning environment inculcating synchronous contents and experiences. Virtual learning model provides extensibility to structure and services of formal e-learning program to earn online distance education degree. Study material, tutorials are provided online, places for posting reviews, comments, ask questions are provided in this virtual paradigm. Virtual classroom is touching all vertical markets as they are easy to use and web deployable. You can deploy Learning Management System (LMS) easy for managing various contemporary units of this training methodology.

Online Learning is another e-learning paradigm that depends on the course structure and course material delivered on the internet (in pdf formats generally) for its learners via computer network technology through digital interface.

Rapid E-learning is used mainly for training/educating non-technical learners that uses captivating Adobe Learning tools or objects to entice learners by creating rich Flash learning content. This training variety targets subject matter experts (SMEs) and students by sharing e-learning content as a stand-alone multimedia portfolio element in a secure environment.

Mobile Learning is another e-learning paradigm based on the availability of portable digital devices and omnipresent network letting you share information and experiences when you are on move.

With flash and multimedia applications penetrating the websphere, dynamic websites have started replacing older static websites. E-learning has also provided productive insight for online learning by imparting knowledge in more simplified and interactive manner quickly and easily. Quality of education has also improved a lot and economy conditions of developing nations are improving. Percentage of online learners are rising day by day as many institutions are offering online learning courses at cheaper rate. E-learning helps you gain higher education from your desired place.

Distance learning has become more agile as different technologies are used with e-learning. Blended learning is gaining visibility as e-learning program offers distance learning and face-to-face learning. For higher education Virtual and Managed learning Environment are provided to manage all aspects of online course through a consistent user interface throughout the network. Many online institutions have started offering academic degree online, providing online support, and online study materials/tutorials, online text books to purchase, online registration, online examination, online forms, online counseling and also at times face-to-face learning.

E-learning provides the flexibility to learn from any place if you have internet access available, there is no time constraint on e-classes, learner can make asynchronous access and no commutation cost is incurred here. Initial development cost is high but it decrease exponentially with increase in number of learners. Major pitfall is that students do not get chance for face-to-face interaction; result is poor in case of collaborative work.

Many technologies are used in e-learning, these technologies are broadly divided into 2 groups: synchronous (exchange of information at the same point of time with other participants, e.g. online chat) and asynchronous (independent of participants at a particular time, e.g. blogs, forums).

E-learning services include CBL (Computer based Learning for learning using computer), CBT (Computer Based Training for training people to use computer applications), WBL (Web Based Training on internet using interactive methods like bulletin boards, videoconferencing).

In short, I would say that Internet is the best repository of online data, funneling its resources to different channels with e-learning extracting most of it and distributing it in more interactive and usable form promoting strong sense of social presence. Online Education, Online degree, virtual universities, traditional universities, are synonymous with e-learning.

Icreon, is an Offshore IT Outsourcing Company, SAP business channel partner that savvy your business needs by providing elite ERP business solutions.

For more information on online web based learning, click here. Rakhi, is SEO content writer at Icreon.com


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