There is nothing to beat a face to face meeting. But this is a luxury many of us cannot afford if we wish to get taught with faculties master in their craft dispersed in various regions of all over the city, country or the world, a new method of teaching emerged known as E-Learning i.e, learning involving internet as a tool to impart education has solved this problem. Consequently travel costs have come down, improved collaboration and customization to tailor make the ability has increased.

This paper investigates various aspects regarding eLeraning.

Keyword

eLearning, Virtual; Collaboration, whiteboards

Introduction

The objective of this paper is to peep into eLearning, its pros & cons. Interaction, Cost, comparison with classical way have been analyzed in the paper. Some of the e tutor / instructors are also been looked at.

Definition

Webster's New Millennium™ Dictionary of English - Cite This Source

Main Entry:	e-learning
Part of Speech:	n
Definition:	electronic learning; the process of learning online, esp. via the Internet and email
Example:
Etymology:	1997
Usage:	e-learner, n
Note:

Webster's New Millennium™ Dictionary of English, Preview Edition (v 0.9.6)
Copyright © 2003-2006 Lexico Publishing Group, LLC

Background of eLearning

The growing use of networked technology to deliver training to workers has spawned an entirely new industry- one known as eLearning. In late 1999, CISCO Systems CEO John Chambers brought attention to eLeraning by calling it the next “killer application.” He further added that education over Internet was going to be so big it would make e-mailing look like a rounding error.

The typical company today has a growing percentage of its workforce spread across a wide geographical area. It is not unusual to find a single department of less than ten people all located in as any as five different cities. In addition challenges such as dispersed work unit presents, it also makes it difficult to provide training to those who are away from the main office campus.

Research on telecommuting has shown that it enhances productivity, but it can be drain on the department training budget if the employee needs to travel long distances to obtain training. With eLearning, the course is brought to the employee anywhere he or she is without the need for travel. Training is delivered to employees when they need it and where they need it, removing time & space boundaries.

Features of eLearning : eLearning classes are becoming more sophisticated and are much more than presenting pages of a presentation. They incorporate the best elements of multimedia and provide features that are typically only available in a class room setting plus some that unique to eLearning. Some of these features include:-

A live virtual class room with a professional instructor.
Multimedia features including 3-D graphics, audio, advanced animation, making the concepts and lessons easier to understand and more engaging.
The ability to raise hand-get the instructor’s attention- to ask questions.
Student’s ability to chat with the instructor and fellow classmate.
Student’s ability to change seats the notify the instructor when they have left the room.
Student’s ability to participate in Quizzes.
Student’s ability to participate in hand’s on lab
Visual aids that are better than the most of those presented in a formal classroom setting.
Collaborative learning through the use of whiteboards, etc.
Up-to-date information.

Desirables:

Going beyond what helped and what didn’t what makes for good learning at the Class-12 level or College levels? First and most important, tutors must be competent and well trained, and sensitive to students needs. Which leads to point number two: one-on-one coaching is immensely desirable. Even outside of eLearning, it is always been sought-after by parents and it’s traditionally expensive. With the Internet as seen , it need not to be. #3- affordability. Then the session scheduling should be student friendly. And last but not least, when one cuts across continents , student teacher understanding each other becomes an issue , small or big.

Working of Virtual Class room demystified :- How does elearning work. For example in an online tuition providing site like TutorVista, student chooses from various plans available. Then, an evaluation test determines the strong and weak areas of student, therefore, what precisely the learning session will attempt at achieving. Programmes are customized to ensure more time is spent targeting students problem areas.Studnet can schedule session for any time they want; as the company says, “it’s like having a tutor in home 24*7.

During session, student & teacher use headsets, and what is called a whiteboard “ an area of screen where both can write-on; whatever is visible to others. Writing can be accomplished using graphics tablet. The student may also choose to use IM; communication thus happens via keyboard, mouse, tablet , microphone & headphones. In additions students can have access to worksheets, lessons, practice tests, question banks and animations.

Advantages of Virtual Class Room:

The biggest advantage of the virtual world is that the fact that all the course material and suggested reading are already in digital format. The instructors can be kept in touch with students via e-mail and can even send notes , pictures and other material after the session.

The most notable advantages of e-learning are flexibility, convenience and the ability to work at your own pace. E-classes are asynchronous which allows learners to participate and complete coursework in accordance with their daily commitments. This makes an e-learning education a viable option for those that have other commitments such as family or work.

Other advantages of e-learning include the ability to communicate with fellow classmates from around the country, a greater adaptability to learner's needs, more variety in learning experience with the use of multimedia and the non-verbal presentation of teaching material. Video instruction provides visual and audio learning that can be reviewed as often as needed. For organizations with distributed and constantly changing learners (e.g. restaurant staff), e-learning has huge benefits when compared with organizing classroom training.

Disadvantages of e-learning include the lack of face-to-face interaction with a teacher. Critics of e-learning argue that the process is no longer "educational" in the highest philosophical sense (for example, as defined by RS Peters, a philosopher of education). Supporters of E-learning claim that this criticism is largely unfounded, as human interactions can readily be encouraged through audio or video-based web-conferencing programs, threaded discussion boards, live chat, blogs, wikis, email, or other synchronous or asynchronous means. As a matter of fact, many in K12 would support e-learning if it was not associated with the more extreme versions that attempt to cut out the directed teacher-student relationship.

The feeling of isolation experienced by distance learning students is also often cited, although discussion forums and other computer-based communication can in fact help ameliorate this and in particular can often encourage students to meet face-to-face and form self-help groups. Discussion groups can also be formed online. Human interaction, faculty-to-student as well as student-to-student, should be encouraged in any form.

Web and software development in particular can be expensive as can systems specifically geared for e-learning. The development of adaptive materials is also much more time-consuming than that of non-adaptive ones. Consequently, some of the cost is often forwarded to the students as online college courses tend to cost more than traditional courses. However, there are transportation cost (and time) benefits with not having to commute to and from campus.

Accent of instructor is also a problem for students. Being present in a multinational virtual classroom, a lot of them are too shy to ask to repeat. Other things like network congestions and bandwidth problem also hampers Virtual Classes.

Conclusion

The old way to teach has advantage of face-to-face interaction, and smaller class with more attention being paid to each individual student. But virtual session helps to interact with not only professor but also people from across the globe. It has been found through various well-structured eLearning Courses that it is a various efficient way to impart training. The structure of the course & technology behind it make it easier understanding of the subject matter. Interaction with the instructor and other students helps to set the Status of the lesson and provides a setting where everyone from each other’s experience much as in regular classroom.Hand-on labs help in applying the knowledge and reinforce learning through various concepts.

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