A Mind for Globalisation with Localisation : Supam Maheshwari, CEO, Brainvisa Technologies, India

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March 5, 2007

bridging this gap. A big investment towards innovation and new indigenized product development is required to cater to Indian markets like retail, insurance etc.
How meaningful have been the domestic market opportunities for you?
Although in our journey so far, we have not focused towards the domestic arket, lately, we have seen a sudden potential for growth of eLearning in India. To tap this potential, Brainvisa has innovated a product called RapideL, a rapid
eLearning tool which has proved to be a boon to the Indian training community. We have also invested in vertical specialisation to tap verticals
like aviation to begin with. There are significant opportunities forinnovating and building products around insurance, retail and manyother booming sectors.

What needs to be done to promote elearningin India?
A huge e-learning funding initiative from the Government could propel the looming domestic talent shortage. This kind of concept prevails in countries like Australia where the Government has budgeted and pays for professional re-skilling. Also, large Indian universities could follow the path of University of Phoenix to again propel good e-learning initiatives. Such large initiatives sually require government or large private funding. Very recently Brainvisa has made a partnership deal to extend the educational services to South African market.

Could you throw some light on how different or similar are the Indian e-learning initiatives and the foreign ones?
Well, our product RapideL has created waves the world over. We have received a large number of enquiries from various parts and hence we have appointed various resellers to provide local presence. We have recently signed up with resellers in UK, Portugal, South Africa, Germany, Italy, Australia, and Switzerland. Our direct custom learning solution services however are focused for the USA, UK, UAE and Australian market where we have our local offices.
Our offices are located close to our customers as it gives us a chance to learn their business problems more like their employee rather like an external vendor, and this enables us to work closely to serve them beyond their equirement.

How do you see the global market for e-learning?
Globally, even today, 25-30% of a company’s training blend is eLearning and the remaining is predominantly Instructor Led Training. Global companies budget 3-4% of an employee’s annual salary for training. With the gradual shift towards elearning in overall training spend, we feel e-learning has a long way to go. Your services cover a diversified sector of the market (K-12, higher education, corporate learning etc).

immerse are your learning solutions for hose markets and which sector do you think will see the maximum growth in next few years? Brainvisa builds and will continue to build learning solutions for all these categories. In my opinion, the category growth is more country specific. Currently, there is a large demand and supply gap in the corporate training market in India. K- 12 and higher education market are lagging but has the potential be the largest growth segment in years to come. In developed economies, corporate training market will continue to grow faster than K12.
What have been the critical roadblocks for you in this sector? Building deeper, integrated partnership with clients take enormous amounts of time in the
industry. Our most critical and the biggest road block has been to try to reduce this time-frame. We can work with a client on any spoke of this wheel to begin with, and would like to transition it towards completing all spokes of this wheel and meet our objective of building a long term partnership. As the CEO

where do you see Brainvisa five years from now?
Size does matter. Five years down, we plan to be one of the most dominant players in the learning industry globally.

UK Junior school offers learning through video conferencing

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March 5, 2007

Essex Junior school of UK is using online learning platform with its own webspace, e-mail, chat and video conferencing tools. < ?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

The school has been working with the London Grid for Learning (www.lgfl.net) to enhance ICT across the curriculum and encourage collaboration between pupils, staff, governors and parents. London Grid for Learning will provide the safe, secure and high-speed broadband connection to the National Education Network (NEN). The NEN provides schools with access to a consistent set of resources, services and applications and is available through LGfL to every school across London. Teachers are using the learning platform on a daily basis to create new resources from the online content supplied by LGfl, including lesson plans, activities and revision materials. Over 80 schools in the borough and over 100 schools are currently using Ardleigh Green's ICT scheme of work nationally.

DyKnow software links 250 students through wirelessly

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March 5, 2007

Virginia Tech is linking more than 250 engineering students on wireless Tablet PCs synchronously to provide an interactive environment between the professor and the students. The new software, named DyKnow will provide unique interactivity between the instructor and the class via the Tablet PC.< ?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

DyKnow software allows a professor to write on their Tablet PC, using words similar to written on a conventional blackboard. As the text places in computer, it automatically appears on each of the students' wireless machines, also equipped with the software package. The students are then able to add notes as the professor lectures, and save them for future reference. The combination of the visual, the auditory and the actual note-taking combine to increase the students' retention capabilities. DyKnow provides an intuitive interface to transmit teacher content to student computers for annotation. This eliminates manual copying and gives students more time to focus on understanding concepts. A professor can also poll the students, receiving instant feedback, and even collect student work written in class on their tablets. Recently, Virginia Tech's Alliance has partnered with Fujitsu Computer Systems and Microsoft Research Corporation continues to support its Tablet PC initiatives. Microsoft Corporation is funding the Tablet PC Assessment team.

Socitm partners with Easy-i to deliver e-Learning on information security issues

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March 5, 2007

The Society of Information Technology Management (Socitm) has partnered with Easy-i, a division of SAI Global Limited to deliver cost effective e-learning courses to public sector managers and staff around issues like Information Security, security for mobile working, Data Protection and the Freedom of Information Act.< ?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

Easy i's e-Learning courses will bring a fully managed online learning resource to people in the public sector who need to gain and maintain knowledge in these vital areas. Easy-i training programmes are highly interactive, visually stimulating and present information in a clear and compelling manner. Socitm members would be able to take benefit from gaining Continued Professional Development (CPD) points upon completion of courses.

Microsoft plans to launch e-Newsletter for Asia-Pacific teachers

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March 2, 2007

Microsoft is planning to launch an e-Newsletter and an Internet portal for teachers in Asia-Pacific region as part of its Partners in learning' programme. This initiative will enable sharing of the best practices among teachers and education officials of the region. < ?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

While inaugurating the Microsoft 'Regional Innovative Teachers' Conference 2007 in Combodia Managing Director-Public Sector, Peter Moore made this announcement. The e-Newsletter, entitled 'Perspectives' would be written by educators for educators. The first issue of the newsletter would be released in April. The portal will enable users to share class notes, lesson plans and other learning and teaching resources. Users will also be able to create communities on the portal and invite other users to collaborate. The company has invested $50 million for the `Partners in learning' programme.

Satellite communication can help to train village students: APJ Abdul Kalam

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March 2, 2007

President of India, A.P.J Abdul Kalam on 1 March 2007 called upon the Sangeet Natak Akademi to see how satellite communication could help performers and teachers in training talented students in the rural hinterlands.

APJ Abdul Kalam informed that the new multi-media systems had become great tools for learning. He emphasized on updating the website of Sangeet Natak Akademi to provide information on arts, artists and related research and documentation. He asked for a sustainable growth in the field of performing art forms.

Euro-Indian ICT Coperation Initiatives in Progress

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March 1, 2007

The two workshops organised in January 2007 by the Euro

Learning Object Recommender System for Personalised Learning

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March 1, 2007

Learning process includes three components- they are students, teacher, and learning materials. From teacher's point of view, teaching is an activity to deliver information and skill to students with some goals to be achieved. From students' point of view, learning is an activity to acquire information from teacher to achieve goals set by the teacher. Students with their prior knowledge acquire new information from teacher. Here, social constructivism paradigm can help students learn collaborative and sharing knowledge each other. Basically, knowledge, which is needed to be achieved according to the course, mainly does not get influenced by how many Learning Objects (LOs) the students have read, but how relevant Learning Objects that have retrieved and learned. Student who has high prior knowledge according to the course, need LOs that is different from other student who has low prior knowledge. Hence, personalisation features are needed which adaptively facilitate student in monitoring their learning progress and provide any resources or learning material that suitable to what they need. This personalisation feature implemented in the e-learning system developed in Faculty of Computer Science (Fasilkom) University of Indonesia (UI) has been named SCELE.

This is always assumed that students have the prior knowledge to any course. However, in reality it is not always the case. Hence, Learning Object Recommender (LOR) is needed in order to enhance quality of discussion in building new knowledge by improving student's prior knowledge. This research In the University of Indonesia in line with the running system, Student Centered E-Learning Environment (SCELE) is built based on open source LMS, Moodle. SCELE is integrated with digital library system called Library Automation and Digital Archive (LONTAR) and Learning Object Manager (LOM). LONTAR can handle resources sharing and LOM manages resources, like upload, search and update resources. From Social Constructivism's perspective, SCELE has features to facilitate discussion among students and teachers (instructors).

The Existing System: SCELE, LONTAR, and LOM

Faculty of Computer Science (Fasilkom), University of Indonesia (UI) implements LMS called Student Centered E-Learning Environment (SCELE) for e-learning which is developed using enterprise resource planning approach. SCELE is developed based on open source LMS, Moodle. Moodle's main features support SCELE, such as communication tools synchronous (chatting) and asynchronous (news and discussion forum), user management, assessment, and also course management. Moodle has been so that it can meet the student-centered learning model requirements. The works are development of space for integrating course graph and assessment graph, integration LONTAR digital library, and integration of Learning Object Manager (LOM) module to SCELE.

Student-centered learning paradigm has been adopted through SCELE as an attempt to change old learning paradigm, which focus on teacher to focus on student. According to R. Cannon in Guide to support the implementation of the Learning and Teaching Plan Year 2000, ACUE, The University of Adelaide, 2000, definition of student-centered learning is:

“Student-centered learning describes ways of thinking about learning and teaching that emphasise student responsibility for such activities as planning learning, interacting with teachers and other students, researching, and assessing learning.”

By using this approach, it is believed that student can meet new learning experience and can exercise active and collaborative learning.

Goals of teaching-learning activities especially in higher education are not only knowledge transfer, but also the development of analytical-thinking (soft skill), that are very useful to face and solve the complexities of real world problems.

The idea of student-centered learning is not limited to campus-based teaching and learning but it can be extended to distance learning. Overall, establishing student-centered, e-learning systems for distance learning will improve the quality of education, at the same time as increasing the possible number of students' participating in higher education. In order to accomplish such objectives, digital library application LONTAR and LOM module are integrated.

Architecture of Learning Object Recommender

Based on the existing curriculum and analysis on SCELE, Learning Object Recommender's architecture has been designed that focus on prior knowledge assessment. Writers propose four main components:

Prior knowledge assessment engine: This function is used for generating instrument of assessments, such as pre-assessment, mid-assessment, and final-assessment. An assessment contains several questions related to the course and type of assessment.

Records of students' performance: Used to collect all results of assessment; then the data of all assessment for each student can be analysed for tracking student's learning progress. Measuring student's learning progress can be done by comparing results of assessment.

LO repository: Used to manage LOs after creation and manage their version.

LO recommender: This function used to provide LOs for students based on result of assessment.

LONTAR: Library automation and digital archive

Digital library is a system, which has various service and information object to support users who need the information object. The information object can still be a book or paper, but the metadata is formatted electronically which can be accessed through digital devices. Digital library feature is integration of LONTAR digital library into e-learning system, SCELE. By using this feature, users can search documents in the library.

Learning Object Manager

Learning Object Manager (LOM) is a feature used as repository of learning materials (LOs) which has upload, download, and searching facility. The definition of LO from Learning Technology Standards Committee – Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, is:

“

Rethinking the Asian ICT and Education Agenda

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March 1, 2007

One Objective- ICT and Education- Opportunities for Digital Asia Several approaches- online and offline discussions, paper presentations, plenary, round tables, interviews, and many more

a study on the Asian minds on education technology, a reference note towards policy level preparations, and an approach for the development of the education community.

The journey starts: The Minister of Water, Energy and Communications, Malaysia accompanied by others to join the conference
Digital Learning Asia 2007, which was a part of the three days umbrella event eAsia 2007, was the culmination of five months of planning and collaborating among CSDMS, Ministry of Energy, Water and Communications, Malaysia (KTAK) telecentre.org, Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), and key partners like, Microsoft, Nokia, SEAMEO, National University of Singapore, Universiti Technologi Mara, University of Uttara Malaysia, and several others to bring together the key stakeholders from Asia and beyond. The Digital Learning Asia planned as a consultative forum for discussion and collaboration was designed to engage the participants representing organisations involved in or interested in ICT and education activities in and around Asia.
Digital Learning Asia 2007 is the third in the series of such consultative forums organised by CSDMS in Asia. While for some participants this was the first time, they met the Digital Learning community at large, for many, it was a place to meet old friends, make new acquaintances and forge news partnerships. The three days of the forum saw participants engage in several planned and adhoc discussions on the way forward for the ICT and education community in Asia.

Breakthrough!

Cognitive gaps among different stakeholders in ICT in education continue to be an area that needs attention. The call is for strengthening of cooperation and linkages between educational institutions and organisations across the globe.

Governments need to form smart partnerships with vendors and non-profit organisations to help bridge the digital gap between students from urban and rural schools.

Dedicated classroom technology has to be promoted rather than moving from one classroom to the other as practiced in several countries.

Leadership within the schools has to be emphasized. Recognising, training and supporting teachers who are champions within the schools system will be a boost to promote digital learning.

The first day also saw the launch of the ITU-Universiti Uttara Malaysia partnership on Asia-Pacific Centre for Excellence for Rural ICT Development. The Minister along with Dato’ Dr Nordin Kardi, Vice Chancellor, Universiti Uttara Malaysia inaugurated the launch.The inaugural day saw a key session by the Government of Malaysia on Malaysian ICT vision that included key experts from KTAK, and Malaysian Communication and Multimedia Commission (MCMC).

Breakthrough!

Continuous professional development of teachers is very important to ensure that they are being updated with new ICT tools and innovative teaching methodologies. There is richness of content available for schools to purchase and use, and governments should seriously consider whether there is any need to do in-house development of materials for schools. There is a need to reveal and revise the mode of assessment, and set mechanisms within the evaluation system that are representative of the changed environment.

The Global Knowledge Partnership had put together a plenary session drawing expertise from Microsoft, Ministry of Communication, Government of India, Omar Dengo Foundation, Costa Rica, EPFL, Switzerland, Foundation ChasquiNet, Ecuador, Community Informatics Research, Network, Training and Development, Canada and Friday Solutions, India. The session hosted by Walter Fust was framed around experiences of multi-stakeholder partnerships and addressing three key questions of poverty reduction, scaling models and government policy involving multi-stakeholder partnerships.
As a part of the overall eAsia themes, the Digital Learning Asia 2007 conference took prominence due to the importance of ICT-enabled learning in an increasingly knowledge driven global economy. In the next two days of the conference, the participants tried to learn about experiences that have enabled change conducive to the new environment of knowledge society as the instruments to bridge the knowledge and education divide. The purpose of this conference was to identify new ICT and education related questions, roadblocks, progress, and debatable issues, and to provide new impetus to the digital learning discussions. The second day began with the plenary session titled ‘ICT in Education: Opportunities for Digital Asia’. The forum participants learnt about national level ecosystem of ICT-enabled education. Understanding the fact that the developing countries are facing today the challenge of preparing their societies and governments for globalisation and the information and communication revolution, this plenary session showcased some emerging application areas and the new potentials of ICTs that can bring in dramatic changes in There emerged a number of methods of re-skilling educators to adopt roles of an administrator, facilitator, technical support and evaluator, to build buy-in and ownership qualities among educators and motivate them to spearhead the ICT-based education process. Many models and practices of teachers’ training and capacity building industrial requirements, challenges of inter-ministerial collaboration, and private sector participation.
With the scope of varied digital opportunities available or can be made available in learning, the hunt for the best of technologies and best of practices intensified in the following session ICT in education: Theory and Practice that resulted in a number of shared experiences on what exists, the availabilities, preparedness, various practices and the shortfalls on the front of ICTs and education influencing the education system of many countries. MyGfL (Malaysian Grid for Learning), a national e-Learning initiative by National IT Council (NITC) and undertaken by MIMOS Berhad to promote and support the lifelong learning agenda in Malaysia reflected some very useful pilot observations and outcomes.

Dr Norrizan Razali, Senior Manager, Smart School Department, Multimedia Development Corporation Sdn Bhd (MDeC) spoke on optimising digital content in classrooms by demonstrating the Malaysian Smart School experience. The challenges with digital content this flagship project of Ministry of Education experiences can be a lesson for others. Pedagogical aspect in digital content encourages teachers to adopt only. Teachers and students find cosmetic aspect attractive; and although cosmetic aspect is attractive, teachers are not compelled to use the digital content. Other challenges include the curriculum-based and exam driven content, and some technical challenges.

Dr Ashish Garg, Programme Coordinator, India, Global e-Schools and Communities Initiative (GeSCI) founded by the UN ICT Task Force, pointed out that adhoc policies that never have explicit connection with the national goals and visions often hamper the ICT in education process. She emphasised that all the best education practices with ICTs can work wonders only if supported by purposeful end-to-end policy.

Zainab Hussain Siddiqui, Sr. Asst. Director (Programmes), COMSATS Headquarters in Pakistan discussed on status of e-learning in Pakistan by citing a case-study: Alliance Fran

A Virtual Learning Centre for Tsunami Affected Students

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March 1, 2007

The article presents the Virtual Science Learning Centre (VSLC) model setup by Annamalai University for strengthening and popularising science information and education among rural youth and school students in Cuddalore district in the Southern Indian state Tamilnadu. Although several remarkable achievements have occurred in the sphere of science education system in India in the last decade, studies have reported that polarisation exists between the urban and the rural students, and situation is still worse in the case of girl students in the rural set up who would like to start their academic pursuits as the first generation candidates. In an attempt to address this, VSLC promotes the capacity building, confidence building and the personality development of the rural youth especially the young girl students. It builds a “Partnership in Learning” (PiL) Programme between the university and school girl students community through telecentres and web portal.

There is a growing tension among majority of the rural students in not being able to cope with the expected level of mastery in certain core subjects like Science, Mathematics and English at the HSC examination levels and also to prepare them for the entrance examination in order to get access to institutes of higher education of some order. “Partnership in Learning'- is an attempt of Annamalai University in Southern India to address this problem statement, the goal of which is to design and develop the ICT based Information Support system to enhance the skill and expertise of High School Students (10+2) in the Tsunami Affected Regions of Cuddalore district. It is intended to deliver science Educational contents based on their curriculum, through various network delivery channels.

It is proposed to mobilise the existing learning resources and to customise the pedagogy with the support of voluntary work from the university academic community along with the district administration and corporate. The purpose is to tailor-made the contents to suit the requirements of student from different socio-economic communities.

Building a synergy between community, university, industry and high school system

The aim of this project is to establish a twinning programme between the university and the rural schools surrounding the university in order to strengthen the university-community learning centre activities with the sole motto of empowering the girl students belonging to the deprived and downtrodden communities in the rural regions who cannot afford to continue their school education.

The objective is to build a university based online-support system through special coaching to the girl students pursing higher secondary education at Cuddalore District in Tamilnadu. The reason for choosing this particular region can be explained by the fact that it is one of the 13 districts in the state of Tamilnadu (World Bank Report) where the gender gap is prominent in the higher secondary schools. Out of the 1,13,268 students enrolled in 97 schools in Cuddalore District, the gender ratio is about 65:35. As HSC is considered as a stepping-stone for pursuing higher education and employment, the Government of Tamilnadu is taking measures to provide free education to all girl students. Priority is given to the SC/ST students and those who are 'single child' in their families. However, there are a number of exogenous and indigenous factors like the availability of schools within neighborhood, the quality of teachers, the level of motivation and coaching, family support and the prevailing social norms still have not allowed many of the girls to take school education seriously at their young age which leads to a social malady later.

To bridge the urban and rural divide and to offer the urban educational facilities to the rural students many efforts have been taken by the Annamalai University. One such effort is to build an Internet-based learning resource centre at the University as part of the community-university extension activities. The high school girl students in the rural regions surrounding the University will be the targeted beneficiaries through this pilot programme.

Secondly, the project aims to uphold the ideals of the President of India in bringing the urban learning facilities to the rural students and to be a partner in the “Mission 2007” agenda of the nation.

The project also aims at building a university centered-village community network that promotes the capacity building, confidence building and the personality development of the rural youth especially the young girl students who have limited opportunity to interact with their peer-groups. It will encourage girls to take up Science, Mathematics and technical subjects.

The project aims at building a university centered-village community network that promotes the capacity building, confidence building and the personality development of the rural youth especially the young girl students who have limited opportunity to inte ract with their peer-groups. It will encourage girls to take up Science, Mathematics and technical subjects.

This aims at building a “Partnership in Learning” (PiL) Programme” between the university and school girl students community-based telecentres will be established by the university that has to run on 24X7 hours basis via a web portal using the cutting-edge technology of the broadband satellite.

Methodology

Identification of target population

The AUWTC will be identifying the higher secondary girls students in the age group of 15-18. Priority is given to the SC/ST students and those who are 'single child' in their families. Then the Centre will collect baseline information about the target population in 13 blocks (viz., Kattumannar koil, Kumarachi, Annagaram, Nallure, Vridhachalam, Kammapuram, Panruti, Keerapalayam, cuddalore, Kurinjipadi, Parangipettai and Mel buvanagiri) of Cuddalore district in Tamilnadu.

Course design

The Centre will design the courses to update with new syllabus framed by the government of Tamilnadu through the e-learning tools in the subjects are Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Science and Technology and English. Coaching by the well-known language with students' favour of used by Internet and handling e-resources for enhancing their learning skills.

Lesson material

A team of women volunteers at Annamalai University representing students and research scholars attached with the department of Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Science & Technology and English will be engaged to develop a web-based tutorial materials for the higher secondary girl students in their regional language and also in the multimedia form.

Multi-channel delivery mechanism

It is proposed to adopt a satellite digital network and cable TV network for the transformation of course materials. A ku-band satellite channel at a speed of 6 Mbps will be established at the Information Technology Training Centre (ITTC) at Annamalai University to ensure real-time course delivery to the local virtual science-learning centres in the selected villages. The courseware also will be transmitted through the local cable TV network. By the end of 2006, it is proposed to establish a minimum of 13 virtual science-learning centres in each blocks. By using a variety of network-based and more traditional distance-education tools, each course involves learners in both independent and group learning activities. Electronic communication occurs between geographically separated learners in using a range of technologies including computer conferencing, audiographic conferencing and web-based delivery. The choice of technology will be based on the subject matter. For instance, application-sharing whiteboards will be preferred to teach Mathematics to show the working of the equations in real-time. Learners at any site can see on their screen what someone at another site writes, and they can also write on, change and augment what has been written by others. The ITTC centre will be fully equipped to provide online teaching, and also online monitoring of the students performance through email. The project identifies three phases: Phase-1 (Pilot Phase) to develop the content, build the partnerships, arrange the availability of the existing delivery channels in one selected village, and perform a proof-of-concept study for the implementation of the computer network link. Phase-2 (Trial Phase) – During this phase, the content and the computer-assisted learning will be introduced into three selected villages. Phase-3 (Roll-out Phase) This stage will master the connecting of individual villages to the learning network.

Strategies

It is proposed for creation of Virtual Learning Center in each block in selected district. The web based learning setting supports question and answer, online discussion, bulleting boards, web courseware download and e-mail communication, thus supporting real time and non-real time interaction on the Internet. Face to face tutoring is made available on the weekends at all local learning community centers in the respective villages.

The strategies will also include online learning resources covering (i) their lesson materials in the simulation and multimedia forms, (ii) question banks, (iii) text books and audiovisual resources (iv) CDs in the various subjects and (v) CAI (Computer Assisted Instruments) course ware.
This project will illustrate the responsibilities of the universities to (re) build communities, responding to local needs and expectations especially in the areas of capacity building and upskilling the youth. It will also showcase how the technology can be used as a strong catalyst for improving the academic interaction freely, openly, in many different ways between student communities in the universities and in the rural regions which would lead to a lot creativity and innovation in the field of STEM.

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