In present technological scenario and rapidly changing social environment eLearning is replacing the traditional classrooms. In developed world countries like United States, France etc, students are trained through online classes and the trend is becoming popular in India where if students are still hesitant to attend white board teachers are providing their expertise to distant students if not in the home country.
India is fast emerging as an e-learning hub, because of its ability to provide a large pool of a highly educated workforce. There are a number of other potential factors for IT outsourcing in India such as cost-efficiency, quality, technical support and a growing economy.
A large section of the population of India is technically skilled with good knowledge of the English language that can be used to create effective solutions in e-learning. These solutions can be cost-effective, as compared to other developed nations and also assures the same level of quality. A number of companies in India possess quality certifications such as ISO and SEI-CMM and meet international standards. Communication facilities determine the success of offshore IT outsourcing, and India has robust cellular networks and broadband Internet to facilitate easy connectivity to the rest of the world. The geographical location is also suitable due to the 12-hour time gap between the USA and India. Work can be carried out on a 24-hour basis and ready solutions are available the next working day in the USA.
The Indian economy is growing at a rapid pace, with a number of companies investing in India and a large volume of jobs are being outsourced. The pro-IT government in India is also boosting the growth of this sector, with IT being a part of the national agenda for the government in power.
Most companies view e-learning as a solution targeted to achieve business goals. Moreover the training costs tend to be cheaper than those developed in-house and viewed as an investment.
However, there is also significant knowledge retention at the end of the training programs. High quality, e-learning solutions can be developed in India with the right technology and industry support in sectors as distinct as steel, IT, automobiles, cement and telecom. Industry watchers estimate that because of its advantages, India is bound to grow in stature as the hub for e-learning programs.Interestingly, many companies are booming up here in India for providing eClasses; places like Mumbai and Bangalore are becoming prominent centers for providing eTutorials. It's booming but the big question is what the future of eLearning is? Everyone educators, parents, and students have the question in mind but no one able to answer. To check it out its imperative to look the trends concerned with learning, which are already taking control in our world.
First and foremost is the knowledge share. Knowledge is expanding at tremendous rate, thanks to World Wide Web where information is available with the click of a mouse and without putting much effort. Today the growth of knowledge share is so much big that a high school graduate knows more than Big Daddy knows in his lifetime and this become possible because of Internet. Websites like Wikipedia, Yahoo, and MSN are already providing the good quality information through Internet. Encarta of MSN is good resource and a viable one. Top Search Engine Giant GOOGLE is also in the race of knowledge share, recently it's heard that GOOGLE is going to launch KNOL a GOOGLE project of knowledge share. When such big corporate are striving for knowledge share its hard to consider, whether the e learning will boom or bust.
Wikipedia has big brain of RMS a Physicist, a knowledge reservoir himself, MSN has Bill Gates and definitely these people are seeing some growth both economical and social in the knowledge share that these are involved in such projects. Sorry to Say, Mr. Gates wound never breathe without money, so definitely there is economical growth too. Providing classrooms through eWay requires much effort than traditional classrooms and there is lack of expertise too, many more companies are coming each day in the market leveraged with eGurus but few of these are only surviving, making 'the survival of the fittest the fact of today', as said by Darwin several decades back.
Considering above facts it seems imperative that eLearning would co exist with other technologies and the way of acquiring knowledge. And as soon as low cost PCs would be made available and broadband will penetrate deeper particularly in developing countries there are chances the elearning will strengthen.
E learning is interactive too. With the growth of eLearning more and more pupil will opt for it, as there would be no worry that math's teacher will beat for a sum doing wrong; since classes are available at ease there also be no hurry to get late and then standing out side waiting for permission. More and more working professionals would be interested in learning eWay because of flexibility the eLearning offers. The eLearning will soon become a great tool to enhance qualifications, and getting promotions in the job market. So to sum up, the future of eLearning is bright.
Talking of e-Learning and academic bodies in India it is imperative to mention the UGC-INFONET. The chairman of the University Grants Commission (UGC) in 2002 decided that the universities and colleges should also reap the benefits, which ICT had in store for them. The deliberations of the various committees led to the setting up of the UGC-INFONET towards the end of 2004. UGC also joined this crusade of introducing e-Learning. Wholly funded by UGC, UGC-INFONET provides electronic access to scholarly literature available over the Internet in all areas of learning to the university sector in India.
Forays have been made in the field of e-Learning in form of Brihaspati, an e-Learning platform developed as open source freeware which IIT, Kanpur has developed and is using since January 2003 supported by Ministry of Communication and Information Technology, Govt. of India. Faculties are using this platform to post the lecture notes, handouts, and reference material on the Intranet for supporting the classroom teaching, benefiting over 75 Universities / Institutes across India, and the list is growing. Yet another project to provide web based training is the National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL), which is being funded by the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) and was first conceived in 1999 to pave the way for introducing multimedia and web technology to enhance learning of basic science and engineering concepts, was launched in September 2006. Significant infrastructure has been set up for production of video-based teaching material by the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT), Bangalore based Indian Institutes of Sciences (IISc) and Technical Teacher Training Institutes (TTTI).
Gyan Darshan which was launched on January 26, 2000 as an exclusive higher education TV channel on Doordarshan to provide quality distance education can be considered as an effective effort in India.
At the institutional level many institutes, mainly private as of now have entered into online distance education and the much talked about NIIT Varsity offers training to 500,000 students annually across 33 countries. One of the world's leading management schools IIM Calcutta amongst others entered into a strategic alliance with NIIT, to offer executive development programmes through virtual classrooms. Researchers, academics, teachers, and students worldwide are excitedly embracing blogs (web logs). Chennai, capital of Tamil Nadu, a state in South India played host to the Bloggers' conference held at the TIDEL Park. CDAC and IGNOU are two of the India's most esteemed organisations in their respective fields, which have held conferences in the field of e-Learning. Online Education is coming up as the biggest challenge to distance education in the near future.
Change is a painful process and is therefore resisted by most organisations but the need of the hour is effective change management by the leaders of the higher educational institutes, which are into e-Learning. Higher educational institutions in India which plan to venture into e-Learning should take a lesson from this and are suggested to first follow the education and communication strategy of organisational change where the stakeholders should be informed as to how the change will affect them. Most of the states run universities in India require an IT / ICT policy of their own. Recently Visvesvaraya Technological University offering online distance education was in news with the teachers prohibiting the students from using EDUSAT and the "bucket theory" or the banking concept of education came into the picture. Fears among the teachers have cropped up that online distance education would put an end to their careers and others have a question in their mind regarding the fate of human aspect of teaching and perceive e-Learning as a threat. But their fears and questions are well addressed by Bill Gates who in his book -The Road Ahead said, "There is an often-expressed fear that technology will replace teachers. I can say emphatically and unequivocally, IT WON'T…."


The government needs to stimulate a learning culture, and e-Learning must become a policy issue. Government must recognise the e-Learning Industry as a separate forum and not treat it as part of the IT enabled services or a sub sector of the IT industry. A case in point is the Australian Government support for promoting e-Learning. The Government there has been successful in increasing the industry use of e-Learning in workplaces.


Schools and Universities taking the e-Learning route are still a very small fraction of the overall number. In addition, the transition from distance learning to e-Learning is moving at a snail's pace. Universities are long over due in making significant improvement in the quality and employability of their courses offered. Through e-Learning, they have a chance to improve both the quality and quantity (wide audience).
The IndustryUnlike the west, in India, even the large corporates and business houses have been slow to adapt to e-Learning. Corporate sector must realise that e-Learning is one of the best ways to train and retrain employees and workforce, and any delay in implementing e-Learning is postponing the obvious; and the cost is enormous in terms of longer gestation period, logistic nightmares of having to arrange training at multiple locations, high obsolescence of content and information and lack of standardisation of training infrastructure. Corporates must start integrating e-Learning into their strategic plan, and by combining e-Learning with a knowledge management system, they can improve learn ability, and performance.e-Learning Companies and Technology ProvidersE-Learning companies have been heavily dependent on custom e-Learning courseware development which is still not very cost effective as per Indian standards and affordability, since the industry is still exploring automation opportunities and process oriented methodologies.
With the tremendous explosion in web usage as a knowledge sharing and delivering platform, e-Learning will become more a norm than an exception. It is incumbent upon all of us to drive this process. Together we need to create an e-Learning infrastructure that is sustainable and continues to transform learning, education and training!