RESEARCH P APER O N E-LEARNING & M N GE NT A A ME EDUCATION: STUD OF STU Y DENT EXPERIENCE

SUBMITTED TO: DR.PARIKSHAT SINGH MANHAS (COURSE COORDINATOR)

SUBMITTED BY: VIDYUT SHARMA (UOJ 11) ANKUSH KOHLI (UOJ 03)

INTRODUCTION:
In this paper, the discussion is about e-Learning in context of management education in India. The objective of this discussion is to analyze what have we achieved so far, and what else we need to do make e-Learning a major success which transforms India. Why e-Learning is important to solve India's need for trained manpower is well documented and spoken about by various academicians, industry bodies and thought leaders. So, in this paper, we start with the fact that e-Learning is a need for India, to help India achieve its growth targets. Based on this fact, we try to figure out how do we reach there?

To start with, let us understand what exactly does e-Learning refer to. Broadly speaking, e-Learning refers to the use of Information and Communications technology to enhance and/or support learning. It covers a wide range of tools and technologies including e-mail, internet, video streaming and virtual classrooms. For our discussion, we will focus more on e-Learning in context of a student connecting to a network and accessing course material, getting his queries answered and collaborating with teacher and/or students. Normally this will include asynchronous tools like usage of course management system or learning management system and synchronous tools like video streaming and virtual classrooms. The student has option to select what he wants to do, within the broad profile of his study plan. This discussion thus excludes passive oneway fixed schedule dissemination technologies like television and radio. The paper starts with an analysis of Indian e-Learning initiatives, and shares information and statistics about their success both real and perceived. It talks about many popular and well-known ones and refers to many other smaller and not-so-well-known initiatives. It then shares a few facts about 2 very popular overseas e-Learning initiatives British Open University and MIT Open Courseware (OCW). The next section discusses why e-Learning has not taken off, with an analysis of factors contributing to the same. Next, it looks at how education and training is getting impacted by technology, how the student profile and preferences are changing. Building on it, a recommendation is made for a Complete Solution Approach to make e-Learning projects successful, scalable and sustainable. A related and interesting discussion is about the excessive focus by Indian community on technology and how it is charmed by open source software and solutions. Why this charm works against achieving e-Learning project success? In the final section of complete solution it shares a few methodologies which can help make an e-Learning project successful.

E-LEARNING INITIATIVES IN INDIA FROM LAST FEW YEARS: Arguably, the most talked about Indian e-Learning project is the NPTEL project. NPTEL (National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning) was conceived in 1999 and funded by MHRD (Ministry of Human Resource and Development). Under the project, 7 IITs (Indian Institutes of Technology) and IISc (Indian Institute of Science) Bangalore, worked on the Rs 20.5 crore project from 2003 to 2006, to create 112 video courses and 116 web courses. All these courses are on undergraduate engineering topics, and made to meet most of the requirements of an engineering undergraduate program (at any Indian university). These courses are available to students, working professionals and colleges (both government-aided and private) at virtually no cost or very low cost. One of the observations is that there is lot of interest (more so during initial launch period), but it is not getting converted into results. The students/ institutions still need to be able to convert this into a usable experience, and improve their learning. Another commercially successful initiative is MBA Programs being conducted for Working Professionals using Satellite Video technology, by institutions like IIM-Calcutta, IIM-Calicut, IITDelhi, IIFT, IIT Bombay, XLRI etc. This was done by these institutions using services provided by companies like HughesNet (formerly Hughes Direcway), Reliance Infocom and now NIIT Imperia. The author could not find reliable information on number of students using these programs, but it is estimated at close to 10,000 annually. HughesNet itself has 2000 such centres in India. This is a successful example in the sense that it met the demand for quality education for working professionals in the city where they are located. It has been an economically viable model for the institutes, the technology providers as well as the students. It will do well to enlist what made this a success -

1. Premier institutes like IIMs, IITs, XLRI etc provided faculty who take the classes, run the program, ensure quality and institutes provide certificates to students. Institutes spent valuable faculty time and effort in creating and upgrading courseware specifically for these programs during the last 10 years or so. 2. The vendor companies opened centres across India, for students to come in and view lectures and attend classes. 3. Satellite-based video technology is used to beam live lectures from the institute studio to the centres. Learning Management System software is used to supplement this for giving assignments, reading material and collaboration among students and faculty. The companies also set-up studios in partner institutes to enable lecture beaming. And as we see, it was a comprehensive solution encompassing quality content, great technology, and services (marketing, infrastructure etc) to meet student need. Sakshat Portal from MHRD is another well-known e-Learning initiative. Modelled on lines of MIT OCW, it has been designed and developed by IGNOU for Ministry of HRD, as a repository of eBooks, eJournals, Digital Repository and other student-relevant information. Study material is classified into various topics. Another related initiative again from IGNOU is eGyankosh another digital repository for learning resources. It has been developed with the objective of long-term preservation of learning materials. Some of the other lesser known e-Learning initiatives/ projects in India are 1. Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham This initiative launched in 2004 uses satellite technology to connect 4 campuses of Amrita University located in 4 cities of South India. There is a collaboration

with US universities also, and the project was expected to expand to 200 universities. It was based on technological support from ISRO. 2. BITS Pilani It has established a virtual university, with DIT sponsorship. BITS has been one of the pioneers in distance education. BITS has been providing courses for working professionals in distance education mode leveraging technology 3.Jadavpur University It started a new inter-disciplinary Masters in Multimedia Development course in 2000-01 as a distance education course using print material, CD ROM, and web-based learning environment. Technology was provided by CDAC Kolkatta and CMC. 4.Aligarh Muslim University It worked on a project in 2006-07 to take its distance education program online, starting with a few courses which are industry-relevant. 5. Central Institute of English and Foreign Language, Hyderabad It had a project for online learning software set-up and usage in 2006. 6. Many other universities and colleges had had small projects/ initiatives where they bought software,hardware and other technology products, got content development done for e-Learning launch. It included the likes of Hyderabad University, Kerala University, Terna College Mumbai, MDI Gurgaon, etc. It is quite heartening to see the interest in e-Learning in India. The more initiatives and projects happen, the more we will collectively learn. The more we learn, the more we improve our chances of making technology work for us.

EDUCATION AND INDUSTRY TRENDS

Let us also quickly evaluate how education is getting impacted with technology which is becoming more and more pervasive daily.

The impact of technology and internet can be summarized as follows [13] Digitization of content and knowledge makes them very economical to reproduce and distribute, Disintermediation by being able to directly connect learners and teachers, and Capacity of individuals and groups is increased, reducing the need for specialized services. The impact of these new developments on the industry will be primarily on following lines 1. Delivery of learning through direct teaching will gradually shift to learning support through mentoring and coaching. 2. Learning will become more personalized. The above two is epitomized by the growth of personal and group tutoring industry segment, both in India and abroad. 3. Learning service delivery will become more ad-hoc and ondemand. 4. Services will be increasingly delivered by a group of institutions at any given time. 5. Spending on learning-content will drastically come down, as more and more e-books and e-material become available. Individuals will have technologies in hand to produce and distribute content. Already MIT Open CourseWare, SchoolNet courses etc., are moving in this direction of making content freely available. 6. Content classification, indexing and marketing services will gain prominence. 7. Software for learning content delivery, production etc will primarily shift into open-source domain. Opportunities for commercial software production will remain for small windows of time. This gives us a good background to analyze why Indian eLearning projects have not been very successful.

BOTTLENECK TO GROWTH
Following factors can be attributed for hindering the success of eLearning projects in India -

1. Process focus To make an e-Learning project successful, enabling processes are very essential. These processes are required to determine learning path for students, feedback collection and using the same for changes, quality control and student support. In Indian context, lack of organizational alignment process is also a major impedient. Pedagogical processes also need to be much stronger to make the project successful. 2. Implementation expertise India lacks individuals and organizations with successful e-Learning project implementation expertise. This is true in both the academic and in private sector organizations serving the academic community. Lack of this expertise, leaves most projects to the fate of experimentation. Coupled with other factors mentioned here, most projects are doomed to fail. 3. Technology focus Indians by nature, are technology-oriented. This has been accentuated by the phenomenal growth of Indian IT industry. The by-product of this growth has been the presence of many small and large Indian IT companies almost across the country. At the last count, we estimate there are more than 80 such e-Learning companies in India. All these companies, with their legions of marketing and sales team, emphasizee too much on technology with their academic clients. Thus the whole e-Learning problem gets relegated to more of a technology selection proceess. The problem worsens, as the academic buyers are not good at evaluating e-Learning technologies. This has been author's personal experience in more than 60 such sales situations he has been involved in last 6 years in India. 4. Open-source technology Indian academics are very enthused by the availability of open-source software and technology for eLearning. In fact many small e-Learning projects are running on open source technology. It also goes well with the paradigm of academicians fostering innovation and freedom. However, its a very narrow-minded approach to a larger problem. Open-source software is great to use, if the e-Learning project team using it has the capability to work on it and extend it for their requirements.

This is not possible in Indian academic institutions, including premier ones. The students at these institutions are still learning these software and technologies, and are at no expert level to make opensource software deliver to meet the e-Learning project requirements. Further, because of Indian IT industry's constant and ever-growing manpower requirements, the team working on these projects at the academic institution keeps changing every six months. Thus there is no continuity and all the time and energy of project team is spent on managing the technology angle only. This leaves precious little time for handling the process and content parts. 5. One-time funding Almost all e-Learning projects in India, are funded with one-time grants from central government bodies and/or institutions. The project team never ever evolves a sustainability model to keep the project running, once the initial funds are over. Thus there is an abrupt end to the project, once funds are over. As a result, what we see is a list of e-Learning projects across India, which started with grand objectives but are left as incomplete works. 6. Lack of quality content and faculty involvement To make the eleanring project successful, quality content is a must. In general, there are very few Indian academic institutions who can claim to generate quality content. Further, to generate quality content, faculty involvement and engagement is a must. Processes and teams need to be set-up to engage the faculty, show them the benefits of participating and in the process generate quality content. Institutional collaboration is one great way to meet this requirement, but Indian education institutes are too mired in bureaucracy to even consider this.

THE COMPLETE SOLUTON APPROACH

A successful e-Learning project requires a wholistic and complete solution.

As shown above, there are three key building blocks for a successful e-Learning project 1. PROCESS This will specifically involve setting-up and improvising the following processes 1. Feedback Process A well-defined feedback process to collect views and opinions of all stakeholders, and primarily students is essential. It will involve robust mechanisms to ensure that feedback quality is maintained and its not relegated to feedback for the sake of feedback. It has to be much more than just distributing a set of survey forms at the end of the session to students and keeping a scores tally. 2. Quality Control Process Courseware and learning process quality need to be controlled. It has to be done at all steps generation, production and dissemination. A novel way to do this, is to have a set of pedagogy and project experts advisory bodies, which suggests ways to measure quality. 3. Stakeholder Alignment Process All stakeholders which may include the host institution or department, faculty and vendor companies need to be aligned to the project objectives. Enagement mechanisms may include regular communication and invitation to learn more sessions.

4. Student Support Process Student guidance to help them make best use of available resources is also essential. They need to be guided to choose suitable courses, help them participate in learning process, and finally share evaluation results and feedback with them. This again has to be oriented as per the type of students full-time/ part-time, student academic qualifications, age group etc., to provide best results. 5. Communication process A wholistic and integrated communication process is essential. Community, at large, needs to be told about the e-Learning project's stated objectives and achievements. With the advent of Internet, it is as simple as publishing key statistics on the website, and doing online press releases. Hiring a Public Relations Officer or a trainee MBA would also greatly serve this purpose. Eventually a strong communication process will also bring more resources and support for the project from various sources. 6. Measurement/ Evaluation Process The single most important process is measurement and evaluation of project success. Goals of the project need to be set, and measured periodically. There are different measures which can be used as per the project objectives. For a project, on the lines of British Open University, it will be number of students and student satisfaction scores. For a proejct on the lines of MIT OCW for publishing learning material, it will be reach of material and usage by the target group. Netherlands Open Education Resources impact paper, gives a great working model for implementing measurement statistics. 2. CONTENT Needless to say quality content is must for the success of project. It is required to make content rich and engaging. It should be suited for the target student group. It is better to start with a small set of courses, evovlve content development processes and then widen the coverage to add more courses. Given that, many Indian institutions may not have great content, they can look at alternate strategies like procuring content through partnerships with other institutions Indian or overseas.

Overseas content will need to be Indianized, and may involve royalty payments. Still that approach may work much better than hoping for the not-so-great Indian institution to come up with great content. 3. TECHNOLOGY The first point to be noted is that technology is for e-Learning project and not the other way round. Given India's deep IT skills, its best to partner an Indian IT company which specializes in e-Learning and working with them on a pay-as-you-go model. Few options to consider are 1. Specialist or system integrator? - An e-Learning specialist company is a better option than going for a pan-India large system integrator, as no Indian system integrator has e-Learning practise, like they have ERP practise. So, a large system integrator either will partner an e-Learning specialist company only, or do a bad job with internal resources. Either way, working with a large system integrator company will only increase the risk and also the financial commitment. So its a no win approach. 2. In-house open-source or vendor approach Our strong recommendation is not to go for open-source software, just because as explained earlier our e-Learning project teams are not attuned for leveraging open-source themselves. With so many Indian IT vendors, it is advised to choose the best of them and leave it to that. There are enough challenges on the process and content side to solve, so it is best to outsource technology component when it can be done. 3. Pay-as-you-go Model This is an important paradigm shift from current approach of awarding a onetime payment tender. This model puts the onus of success on the vendor as well. This is more likely to succeed. If it works, the vendor will also make more money, and hence will be motivated to do it. 4. One vendor or multiple Again to ease the pain of technology, it is best to choose one vendor to provide the complete solution. Already with the advent of software-as-a-service (SaaS) and Cloud

Computing, it is becoming irrelevant to buy and keep hardware with the instituion. All these are best left to a single vendor. Pay-as-yougo model reinforces a single vendor approach as well.

REFERENCES
[1] National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL) Booklet, June 2006. http://nptel.iitg.ernet.in/NPTELBooklet.pdf [2] Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), E-learning in Tertiary Education, December 2005. http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/55/25/35961132.pdf [3 ] NPTEL Usage statistics http://in.youtube.com/ii t and http://nptel.iitm.ac.in [4] Rupak Chakravarty and Sukhdeep Kaur, OpenCourseware: Learning beyond Classroom, Other Indian initiatives eGyankosh etc. [5] Indrajit Bhattacharya and Kunal Sharma, The e-Learning Wave in higher education: An indian scenario of adoption and diffusion, Other Indian initiatives like of Jadavpur University. http://www.digitallearning.in/articles/article-details.asp? articleid=1127&typ=COVER%20STORY [6] Dr Vijay Kumar's presentation network-enabled openeductaion, Why Indian initiatives are not scaling-up? [7] Netherlands paper quote http://kn.open.ac.uk/public/getfile.cfm?documentfileid=12190 [8] British open University Satisfaction scores , http://www.open.ac.uk/new/what-is-the-ou.shtml [9] British Open University How it started Excerpt from Learning from Change by Deborah DeZure, American Association for Higher Education