The State of Sourcing

There has been quite a brouhaha over the impact of tablets and e-book readers in our lives over the past couple of years. With the iPad series being the clear front-runners, the other game-changers are Amazon’s Kindle series and the Nook by Barnes & Noble. All the potential talk over how these will have a massive influence on media, marketing and publishing is explained by the fact that Amazon and Barnes & Noble have each decided to put another 4-5 million tablets each into the market in 2012.

This holiday season, consumers are looking at buying and gifting another transformational format for the media and entertainment industry – the e-book. With the foundation being built slowly over the past two years, the e-book industry is now unleashing its full marketing potential to convince tablet owners to make the “digital switch” from traditional hard covers and paperbacks to its electronic form. Amazon and B&N have already established their proprietary e-book formats and dozens of other publishers are getting on-board to digitize their output.

Continue reading ‘Holiday season cheer for publishing outsourcing with meteoric rise in demand for e-book services’ »

The Indian higher education sector is in the midst of tremendous growth and change. The population demographic has created an unprecedented number of young people in this country. The scale of the problem that India faces in terms of educating and providing employment to her vast youth population, is unique. The sheer size of the problem has made education a subject of national debate, with the attendant glare of the media and public opinion. In the past year, giving further impetus to the debate is the political push by the Human Resource Development (HRD) minister, Mr. Kapil Sibal and his views on the need for reform in the Indian education system.

There exist great opportunities for the private sector to play a dominant role in the near future. With an eye on the future, a few weeks ago TiE (the entrepreneur network) set about hosting a seminar on private participation in Indian higher education. I was invited to represent ValueNotes, and moderate a most stimulating panel discussion, joined by the likes of Mr.Siva Ram Mallela (Founder of Knowledge Partners, Former Dean of New Initiatives at ICFAI University) and Mr.Chenraj Jain (Founder, Jain University). I’d like to share some of my thoughts on the subject,  enriched from the event!

Continue reading ‘TiEing up Indian Higher Education’ »

Through much discussion and debate, the Apple iPad seems to have held its own, when it came to university implementation. Whether the goal was to enhance campus communication, replace textbooks, introduce new learning approaches in the classroom, or promote informal learning, the iPad seems to have clicked with higher education, in the first quarter of its release. We’re hearing of more and more faculty/depts. experimenting with ways to leverage the technology to suit their varied learning requirements, be it at law schools, medical schools, engineering students, or business related content/app development.

So what was the reaction from the corporate learning segment? Here’s a couple of noteworthy initiatives that have reached mainstream online discussion.

Continue reading ‘Why isn’t the corporate learning community excited about the iPad?’ »

The comparisons between Apple iPad and this $35 ‘still unnamed’ mobile device are so unfair. The online buzz about this new product is almost deafening. Ever since the Indian government announced the launch of the ‘$35 m -device’ (lets call it that, since it does not have a name yet, and this anyway seems to be the most exciting ‘fact’ about it), discussions abound on its viability, price, wasted funds, its not-so-successful predecessors, apps that it can offer and its future. While debate on all of these is justified, some more thoughts:

Why is cost such a big issue?

Continue reading ‘Education at $35… Dreaming big?’ »

So I played devil’s advocate, while the rest of the learning world appreciated the leap forward with the Apple iPad. Having carefully evaluated the bad and the ugly (thanks to everyone on Linkedin/this blog who shared), there is definitely a need to look at everything good that’s coming out of the tablet industry, of relevance to the learning community.

A market-ready foolproof device the iPad still is not, but there are plenty of interesting ways it may be leveraged for learning at the workplace / university (or actually, outside of those places). In this post, I want to the cover the actual implementations being made by educators (I’ll cover corporate initiatives in my next post).  A great example is Rutgers University’s iPad marketing course that I blogged about earlier. There’s a lot of talk of how the iPad is a game changer, but how many universities are putting their money where their mouths are, and investing right away?

Continue reading ‘Top 5 University iPad initiatives’ »

In our nationwide survey of ~400 Indian higher education students (for the EDGE report on online assessments), we had some interesting insights w.r.t attitudes about online exams.

Continue reading ‘Do students want to take subjective assessments online?’ »

The Union Human Resource Minister, Kapil Sibal has taken it upon himself to completely overhaul the Indian education system… a good and long-awaited move. The Right to Education Act (RTE) was indeed a major development in the scheme of things. This is another move towards making education universal, as primary education, something that many of us take for granted is actually out of bounds for millions others.

Recently the Minister talked about the need to recruit 2 million teachers to achieve the goals set out by the Act. The other requirement would be more schools… schools where students are actually taught, and not just decrepit buildings. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has also expressed a desire to build 6500 ‘model’ schools. This is where the private players come in. That the Government will need help from the private sector to successfully implement RTE, hardly needs an intelligent analysis. What is debatable is – Will the PPP work? How will it work? And how long do we have to wait before it makes an impact? The problem, we cannot afford to lose any more time.

Continue reading ‘How long before PPP bridges the education demand supply gap?’ »

Much has been said about m-learning, and the technology fueled future… rich with possibilities for the next generation of student learners. And that we are now entering a phase where we can peek into that future, through emerging technologies. Apple can be termed the big daddy in this race, the mover and shaker who challenges our perceptions of what technology can do for us, with innovations abound, come every MacWorld. In this post, I’d like to talk about where m-learning is heading, using Apple’s latest contribution to the mobile computing world – the iPad.

As early as the January unveiling of the iPad, the e-learning blogosphere has been buzzing with the possibilities that the device presented for learning, both at the corporate and the school/university level. I would say that post the initial excitement, the ground realities really sunk in. Innovative? Yes. Made things interesting? Yes. But recommend as a formal learning tool? Not so sure. Why the hesitation to a device that was designed to really ‘push the boundaries’ according to the maker?

Continue reading ‘iPad: m-learning at its best or worst?’ »

ValueNotes recently completed a study (in association with EDGE Forum) focusing on trends in adoption of exam technology by Indian exam authorities. As part of this initiative by MeritTrac, ValueNotes interviewed 75 key decision makers, including vice chancellors, controllers of exam, registrars and exam board directors. The study also comprised a nationwide survey of another key stakeholder in the education system – the student. This was primarily because the exercise of taking exams online will yield many benefits to the student population.

Vice chancellors we spoke to mentioned that there was a certain amount of reservation expressed by students and therefore adoption was slow. To bridge the perception gap of these university officials and students, we spoke with 400 students from across Tier I, Tier II and Tier III cities, studying mostly at graduate and postgraduate levels, with a few inputs from junior college and PhD students. The aim was to capture the students’ awareness, readiness and experiences with online examinations. Even as efforts are under way to make ICT an inherent part of our education system, are the students really ready? We share some of our findings here.

Continue reading ‘Do Indian university students welcome online assessment?’ »

• Schools in West Asia and Gulf will be offering certification from the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), with the formal launch of CBSE-I, the international brand of the board.
• The Foreign Education Providers (Regulatory) Bill that will allow foreign universities to open branches in India was recently approved by the cabinet. When this bill becomes a law after approval in the parliament, foreign universities will be able to enter the education market.

The developments in the education space have evinced a lot of interest. The pace at which changes take effect may not alter much with respect to the earlier years. Though if any of these are effective and achieve what they are meant to, India will arrive on the global education scene. The two instances mentioned above tackle two different segments within the education market – K-12 and Higher Education.

Continue reading ‘Indian education: Giant leap to globalization’ »