E-learning is the next big wave and the wide spectrum of courses will range from high school studies to degree courses in science and engineering and of course corporate training, which will need a uniform framework, reminds Dr R Srinivasan

Continuing my earlier article on "Why e-Learning?", I would like to bring in some more references to substantiate the projection on the future of e-Learning. John Chambers , CEO CISCO Systems, predicted, in his address in COMDEX 1999, "the next big killer application for the Internet is going to be education. Education over the internet is going to be so big it is going to make e-mail look like a rounding error". The e-learning wave has already started, particularly in a country like United States. According to Dr. Darab Unwalla of Florida Atalantic University, India is not far behind and he ascertains, "when things happen in India, they happen in an epidemic manner" (Ref. TOI, March 19, 2001).

e-Learning is a typical example of self-learning; however self-learning is not new. It is said that self-help books grew at 21% in a period of five years in 1993-97; but learning through the net, will provide more facilities than this and so it is predicted that by 2003, corporate training , in particular, in USA will expand to $62.5 billion with $15 billion in outsourced training.

E-Learning is cost effective, facilitates higher retention of contents through personalized learning and above all Online learning is less intimidating than instructor-led courses. The spectrum of courses envisaged under e-learning is going to be vast and will range from high school studies to the degree courses in science and engineering and ofcourse corporate training. Because of the infrastructure availability of real audio and video in Internet, even the courses which were mainly instructor-lead like communication skills, honing of Business and Management skills, Time Management, Personality Development, etc. are also being planned to be available for self-learning.

However any new technology being brought to be complementary to the existing one will not be able to see the light of the day unless it becomes user friendly. So, whatever may be the type of the course, the need is to have some of kind of standard or uniformity. Simply porting the textual material of a course on the net will not be anyway different from a physical book; in fact reading a book is easier than reading pages on the screens which will not only be time consuming but also strenuous. Whatever may be the course, it should be developed under a standard framework.