E-EDUCATION: The RevolutioNext

Having captured one bastion after an other, the communication revolution is now all set to change the way people will learn and the way the education and training business will be transacted. “A global academic village” is in the making. After e-commerce, e-schools do not seem to be very far–“virtual universities” are already raising their heads. Is an electronic class going to take over the chalk-and-blackboard variety? It will be too premature to affirm or negate the motion, but this form of education will definitely change the way people will learn in the 21st century. 

Despite the fact that the first non-military use of the Internet was by universities, educators, even those with technical expertise, have not used electronic networking to its potential. But the change is setting in. The new education business is trying to break from industrial age learning experience

and apply information age learning experience. Rather than using the same old classroom techniques, with new technology, educators are looking forward to developing approaches specifically for the Web. These new approaches may integrate features such as book web sites, pocket computers, and audio equipment.

The Emerging Trends



The trend in the market would show that the on-line education is fast catching up. As per a report by UNESCO, there are approximately 80 million students enrolled in higher education programmes world-wide in 1999, of which 6,150,000 are on-line. Australia alone enrolled 690,000 students in higher education courses. In the US, which is coming up as a big base for on-line education, 710,000 students were enrolled in distance learning last year. By 2002 this number is estimated to touch 2.2 million. According to IDC, a whopping 90 percent of the on-line learning market is still untapped. The University of Southern Queensland in Australia claims that 75 percent of its 20,000 students are studying through distance education that involves some form of electronic delivery. Further, according to the Campus Computing Project, 30 percent of US colleges and universities plan to incorporate the Internet into their distance learning initiatives.

The rise of the “virtual university” will result in greater mobility in the delivery and sourcing of coursework. On the content side, higher education providers with considerable international brand equity, for example, Stanford and Harvard, may exploit on-line distribution channels to penetrate overseas markets. Opportunities also exist for regional players to create the relationships and infrastructure necessary to deliver bandwidth intensive services to the Asian market.

Even Computer-Based Training (CBTs), which has been growing at a phenomenal rate, is being transformed into Web-Based Training (WBTs). There are a variety of courses on WWW, which can be taken by learners sitting at home in any part of the world. Since the Internet is the largest province for researchers, academics in laboratories, schools, colleges, and business and at workplaces, educators are using it

increasingly to enhance teaching and learning.  The Interactive Advantage



The Internet not only provides inquiry-based learning where questions are answered by the most proficient people of the field, it also gives an enormous scope for discussions, exchange of views, resulting into multi-dimensional research on the subject. If on the one hand teachers and students can come together, study and collaborate with the rest of the world, it also gives teaching community the opportunity to share learning technologies and strategies that can be integrated across curricula.

Teaching and learning have become self-paced and the Internet has dramatically increased the speed of learning. Internet-based pedagogy is different from the traditional classroom variety. The combination of text, sound, and images produces much better result than the education through monologic communication technologies. It has resulted in the emergence of new breed of educators who call themselves “Instructional Technologist”. This community is focusing a great deal on how to deliver education through the Web.

The two main theories of education “objectivism” and “constructivism” are aptly handled by Internet-based education since Internet and WWW have most of the infrastructure a school needs, and are capable of using them in a better

fashion.

It is not very difficult to visualize a situation where a global curriculum could be developed and followed which answers the changing global needs. The Internet has changed the way distance-education can be delivered. It has added that magic of “interactivity” which was missing from the other media such as TV and radio. 

The data about distance learning may not be stunning, but it does show that the trend is setting in. In 1998-99, the total value of Australia’s education

exports was AUD$ 3.182 billion ($2 billion). Of the estimated 85,900 international students, 70 percent are on

campus in Australia, 7 percent are off campus by distance education, and 23 percent are studying at offshore campuses. (http://www.idp.edu.au/research). Even Asia is not lagging behind. According to Hong Kong-based on-line education start-up NextEd Ltd, the market for on-line and distance education services in Asia is already worth $4 billion and growing at 25 percent every year. The Critics and the Advocates



The spread of Internet-based and on-line education has not gone without criticism. James Perley, chairman, and Denise Marie Tanguay, member, of the American Association of University Professors’ Committee on the Accrediting of Colleges and Universities, argue, “the fundamental difficulty with institutions that rely heavily, or exclusively, on distance education is that they are characterized by a practice called ‘unbundling’. In that practice, course materials are prepared by a ‘content expert’ and delivered by a ‘faculty facilitator,’ in a uniform manner, producing predictable and measurable ‘outcomes’ that fit uniform assessment tools. Such a process of turning education into modular units represents a basic change in an essential characteristic of higher education.” 

However, the kind of focus the educators in on-line business are keeping would indicate that these issues are well taken care of. Moreover, even in the traditional setup, these issues are very much prevalent and create difficulties in learning and teaching. As per Steven Crown, executive director, North Central Association of Colleges and Schools, “We also acknowledge that on-line institutions create special concerns about the quality of instruction, usually related to the lack of physical connection between faculty members and students, and among students. Those who believe that high-quality education requires face-to-face interaction will always question the performance of virtual institutions. However, many faculty members and students say on-line programmes actually enhance interaction. Their positive, firsthand experiences undercut simplistic denials of the effectiveness of distance education.”

Neeraj Agarwal, business group head of solutions development in NIIT’s Leaning Technologies Business (LTB), tries to strike a balance. He says, “The direction should be to think in terms of “hybrid technology” of education which combines features of class room education, CBTs, and on-line education”. He also does not agree that on-line education will negatively affect the CBT or traditional education business. “It will only compliment the CBT business by eliminating limitations of the CBT,” he says. 

Conclusion



All said and done, on-line education is here to stay. And the success of on-line education is critical since it will decide how another communication revolution in the form of satellite providers will impact education. The future has a lot in store. If this technology becomes economically viable, a new way of education and training will emerge. This has already started in some parts of the word. Yes, “the learning on demand or anytime anywhere learning” is not far away. It could be on your mobile phone and I am not kidding!