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Emergence
of E-Learning:
The
need to improve access to educational opportunities, at
all levels, led to the innovation of correspondence
courses in the latter part of the 19th century. Over
time this delivery model incorporated the use of study
centers and telephone networks for tutorial purposes and
became known as "distance education" to
connote education at off-campus locations. As real-time
technologies were applied, such as radio, television and
video-conferencing, a variety of additional labels
emerged such as "open learning",
"flexible learning," "tele-learning"
and "distributed learning".
As
online delivery models have become possible with their
capacity to enable asynchronous interactivity, the terms
"virtual education", "online
learning", and "e-learning" have emerged.
They are being used, often interchangeably, with all of
the earlier labels to describe almost any educational
activity that makes even minimal use of information and
communication technology (ICT).
Delivery
of E-Learning Materials
Thus
virtual education is basically a distance education
programme through virtual campus using the information and
communication technology (ICT) such as Internet and web
technologies. The delivery of the academic programmes and
the learning materials under the proposed virtual education
programme would include learning objects and repositories in
the web, CD ROMs, video cassets and printed materials. The
teaching-learning process will aslo include on-line
class-rooms and on-line seminars. The distance education
programmes proposed under virtual education will be designed
in such a way that all cross sections of learning community
with and without internet and computer facilities could be
benefited.
Demand
for Virtual Education
Even
though large number of Universities in India and abroad
are offering varieties of academic programmes through
distance education, there is still a large demand for
distance education programmes. International and
National campaigns such as "education for all"
have succeeded in drawing learners into the education
system and the development of distance education
opportunities with the growth in numbers of learners at
an estimated growth rate of 33% per year.
Commonwealth
of Learning (COL) is constantly encouraging promotion of
Virtual Education over years and has published a number of
articles and reports on the subject in their web site
www.col.org. The following reports, published in their
website, highlight the various aspects of Virtual Education
and its future.
In
India, the University Grants Commission (UGC) and the
All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) are
keen in promoting Virtual Campus for learning.
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