In the first of his series of articles on e-Learning, Dr. R. Srinivasan reminds that "learning" is the foundation for the development of a nation.

In my first article under the column, "e-Governance", in EC, I had mentioned that we are in the era of the most used English letter, "e". Loke Soon Choo, Regional Managing Director of Oracle Corporation deliberated 10 important "e's" as part of his talk delivered on the occasion of US-ASEAN Business Council Meeting held in Singapore in October 2, 1999, the topic selected by him being, "10-Point e-Nation Framework to be Developed". The e's cited by him were: e-Vision, e-Governance as Catalyst, e-Business as the primary market push factor, e-Culture as the social fabric, e-Learning as the foundation, e-Economy as the way to finding new markets, e-Entrepreneurs as the enabler, e-Innovation as the nation's security and e-Image as a way to position the nation. It should be noticed that he stresses that "Learning" is the foundation for the development of a nation.

From ancient times ever since learning through "Gurukula Vasa", we have been moving chronologically to make use of the technology at each phase of time; however, we still follow the philosophy of continuing the model of having classroom teaching to learn. While it is necessary for a person to upgrade his skills, getting the needed educational background and qualification, the question is whether it will be cost effective and meet the deadlines employing training programs at advanced levels or learning in a corporate environment. Many eminent people are now propagating the slogan, "Learn to Lear" because with the present trend of short life span of any technology, giving way to newer developments, technology obsolescence is becoming common. This brings in the need for continuous earning to keep pace with this trend.

Particularly in the area of software development and information technology, the corporate sectors have always been giving significant importance to upgrade the knowledge of the employees through different methods of training, namely special programs conducted by freelance trainers and consultants, establishment of in-house training divisions, setting up facility for classroom based training(CBT), etc., Because the first two methods prove to be very expensive, training through CBT's has been tried. However, it has been found to be not very effective because of the availability of only textual contents on CD. The employees viewed it only as replacement of printed training materials.

It has been much worse in other cases, like a student who would like to add value to his knowledge while studying in the college. Because (I) Classroom based training may not be an effective training material for him. The reason in both cases- for a person from corporate sector or a student from a college - is that they will look for a cost effective and interactive medium of training and this is where e-Learning is becoming popular.

E-Learning actually stands for learning "online". It could be through Internet or intranet in the corporate sector or through a sever where the lessons are stored in the educational institutions. We will see the architectural and technical details involved in e-Learning in the next article.

( To be continued)

(The author is Chief Technology Officer, Internet Component Management Group, Bangalore and can be contacted at: r.srinivasan@iCMGworld.com)