The State of Sourcing

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?’ »

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’ »

The growth of technology-enabled learning globally has resulted in hundreds of service providers mushrooming in India in the last 10 years. In 2009, the ValueNotes report ‘e-learning Outsourcing: Advantage India’ estimated over 140 technology-enabled learning providers catering to the corporate, government and education sectors across the world. While these companies primarily focused on international markets for business (US and UK), ValueNotes highlighted the trend towards exploring the domestic corporate and education market.

With the Indian higher education sector undergoing major changes, domestic providers are now offering a variety of services to help educational institutions become more efficient and globally competitive. Technology can benefit these institutes in areas such as course delivery (through e-learning), automation of administrative processes (ERP, etc), and exam management (through online delivery and assessment), among others.

Continue reading ‘Exam Technology Outsourcing: The Indian Higher Education Context’ »

When Kapil Sibal first started to make news with efforts to bring education to the forefront, he took pretty much every one by surprise. Hardly does education grab front page headlines in the newspapers. With 44 Universities set to lose their deemed status,  it is the status of more than 1 lakh students that is at stake now. Will they manage to pressurize the government into not doing anything? National Knowledge Commission and the Prof Yashpal-led Committee to Advise on Renovation and Rejuvenation of Higher Education have both recommended that ‘deemed to be university’ system be scrapped.

Considering that the repercussions of any university not functioning properly will be borne by the student community, its extremely important that their interests be held paramount. With universities running in 2-3 rooms, it is obvious that deemed university is a tag that many use for dubious purposes. The UGC has also added to the woes by providing the deemed university status to as many as 36 institutes in the last 5 years. Deemed is the now ‘doomed’… do you think?

Continue reading ‘'Deemed' – Not fit’ »

Over the last month, I’ve noticed two conflicting pieces of news in the learning sphere– while one e-learning network gets taken down in the US (Utah e-learning consortium), another one springs up in Canada (elearnnetwork.ca, Ontario).

Members from the Utah System of Higher Education state that massive budget cuts did not allow them to continue with hosting the network. Also, low response rates were an issue (only 200 students)…maybe the market wasn’t as big as estimated, one source commented. The network in Utah was aimed at helping rural students enroll in courses from multiple universities in the state.

Continue reading ‘Distance learning a “gimmick” for educational institutes?’ »