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21st Century Learning Skills: Implementing Student Individual Education Plan System

2012-01-17T04:11:00.000-08:00

Recently have gone through an wonderful concept called IEP (Individual Education Plan) in schools and I really wanted to share it in my blog and will recommend my circle of educational consultants who can refer this system to their known schools or even colleges.

The development of 21st century learners through guided instruction, critical thinking, collaborative processes and technology production is paramount in education. Subsequently, special education teachers are focused on closing the achievement gap that exists between their students and their non-disabled peers. The implementation of student-led individual education plan (IEP) meetings is a journey of students have traveled to develop 21st century skills and become empowered, self-motivated learners. This process to engage students in their learning and develop the IEP starts at the beginning of each school year. Student-led IEPs are a vehicle for promoting self-determination in students with special needs. With the guidance of special education teachers, students document their progress toward individualized goals, engage in activities to gain an understanding of the purpose and components of the IEP document, and present at annual IEP meetings.

Students practice multiple higher-order thinking skills when preparing for their student-led IEPs in which they can document working toward goals:

Reading and writing in context.
Goal setting.
Advocating.
Using presentation skills.
Listening and responding.
Compromising.
Summarizing.

Additional benefits of implementing student-led IEPs include increased involvement of families and general education staff in planning developments. Increased collaboration occurs when the student, staff and families work together to develop a plan. Thus, the IEP meeting is a reflection of each individual student and is focused on his or her abilities. Furthermore, the ongoing planning provides the opportunity for frequent feedback from all stakeholders.

It’s like driving a car

Implementing student-led IEPs is a journey in which special education staff are vital in setting the course and providing opportunities for student success. The implementation journey is similar to the activities involved in buying a new car:

Take a test drive. Implementing student-led IEPs requires the teacher to understand what their students know about their skill gaps, services and IEPs. Thus, it is paramount that a teacher solicits student feedback. A survey asking students to rate their level of knowledge about the IEP process, meeting and services will inform the teacher’s instruction regarding the IEP. After each student with an IEP completes a survey, the special education teacher averages the classroom data and includes the baseline data on a graph in the classroom data center. The teacher tracks progress throughout the planning process and plots the data on the chart. The classroom data center is an interactive display the teacher and students use to monitor classroom progress toward common goals on charts and graphs. Information from the data center is used in conversations with the special education teacher and students to encourage continuous improvement and focus instruction and learning on the most important concepts.

Read the owner’s manual. All too often, IEPs are locked and safeguarded in a teacher’s file cabinet, and students have limited to no access to these documents. In an effort to increase an understanding of the IEP document, teachers should allow students to access these documents. Creating an IEP scavenger hunt in which students search for the IEP’s key elements is one way to teach them about the document’s key components. During this process, students work with the special education teacher to locate portions of the IEP. Students are asked to locate signatures of individuals who have previously attended conferences, their goals and objectives, accommodations and services. Conversations are conducted in an environment that is conducive to honest and age-appropriate dialogue with students.

Set direction. Following the IEP scavenger hunt, students are presented with a slideshow called “An Introduction to Your IEP.” In student-friendly language, this presentation details the components of their IEP. At the end, students are given a checklist of tasks to complete prior to the student-led IEP meeting. This checklist includes a PowerPoint or Prezi presentation template students will create for the meeting. The template includes slides that address:

Student strengths.
Progress toward current goals.
Current accommodations and necessary accommodations moving forward.
Feedback from parents.
Feedback from general education teachers and related services providers.
Goals for the following year.
A plan for services and placement.

Students also are required to write a statement regarding their present levels of performance, compose business letters and address envelopes inviting IEP members to the meeting, and conduct a self-assessment regarding their learning styles. Through these activities, students become more aware of their abilities, develop key communication skills and reinforce 21st century skills.

Follow the map. As the school year progresses, students monitor their performance in data binders, which allow students to track their individual progress in each goal area. They are routinely shared with their classroom teachers and parents as an avenue for collaboration and communication. The data binders also include a list of their classroom accommodations in which the students monitor the frequency they use the accommodation. This is discussed during IEP planning to determine the accommodations that are needed for the student. Specific, measurable, attainable, resources and time-bound (SMART) goals are also set. They are related to the results of the pre-IEP survey and the students’ progress toward their individual goals. Students and the special education teacher determine the level of understanding in each of the survey areas they want to achieve at the end of the school year, and they monitor their progress throughout the planning process. In monitoring individual goals, a scatter diagram was created to allow students to indicate, with an anonymous sticker, their progress toward the individual goals in their goal passports in the classroom data center. Students soon recognize trends on the charts and begin posing questions regarding their progress and seeking solutions to improve.

Maneuver the obstacles. Implementing student-led IEPs is not done without some roadblocks. Students may be hesitant to present in front of a group of professional adults. It is vital to give students the opportunity to refine their presentation skills within the context of the curriculum and interventions, as well as with their IEPs. Furthermore, some students’ disabilities may warrant a modified format for an IEP meeting in which the special education teacher or parent prompts or models appropriate communication strategies. In one instance, a student was videotaped giving the presentation prior to the meeting. Parents may wish to discuss with teachers any issue they feel are not appropriate to have with the students at the time of the student-led IEP. Throughout the IEP planning process, the special education teacher needs to facilitate collaboration so any concerns are addressed prior to the meeting. If a lingering concern exists, parents are encouraged to set up an appointment to meet at the end of the student’s presentation.

Start their engines. The special education teacher develops a schedule of IEP meetings. Students generate letters to participants in the IEP that are sent two weeks prior to the IEP meeting. These meetings are allotted 45 minutes, which covers the time needed for the formal presentation, follow-up questions and completion of the IEP document. On the day of the IEP, students should be prepared to greet the IEP team members at the door. When all members are present, students are prepared to facilitate introductions of all team members and begin the IEP meeting following their prepared presentation. As students integrate technology into their presentation through PowerPoint, they also are prompted to engage team members in conversations regarding the presented information. All members of the IEP have an opportunity to ask questions or provide feedback.

Provide opportunity for feedback. A key element to the IEP process is general education staff and parent involvement. Using a quality tool such as a lotus diagram, parents and general education staff provide feedback on multiple areas of the student’s performance, including:

Academic strengths and areas for growth.
Behavioral and social emotional strengths, and areas for growth.
Effectiveness of accommodations.
Goals for the student.
General comments regarding their services.

The student collects this feedback, which is shared in the context of the IEP planning with the special education teacher. This feedback is then included in the student’s IEP presentation, during which the teacher or parent can elaborate on the feedback to be used to develop a more comprehensive IEP for the student. Furthermore, parents and teachers are encouraged to complete a follow-up survey regarding their experiences at the IEP meeting. The special education teacher uses this opportunity for feedback to refine the process or respond to lingering questions or comments regarding the IEP.

The finish line. As students complete their presentations, a follow-up celebration is organized to congratulate them on their successes and reflect on their experiences. Student-led IEPs are the vehicles for driving continuous improvement and developing 21st century skills in special education students. The skills developed through the student-led IEP process are grounded in the desire to create critical thinkers, technology-capable producers and skilled collaborators. As a special education teacher, there is no greater victory than seeing a child empowered through engagement in their learning.

Tamil Nadu has potential to become destination of choice

2011-12-22T01:24:00.000-08:00

Tamil Nadu has the potential to become an international destination of choice. With the combination of talent, technology and incentivised policy, the State has all the ingredients to become a global destination for products and services, S. Ramadorai, Advisor to Prime Minister on Skill Development, said on Wednesday.

Delivering the keynote address at ‘Connect 2011' meet organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) here, he said the economy of the State was dependable and consistent. Mr. Ramadorai said Tamil Nadu had the country's brightest minds, a vibrant entertainment industry, thriving art and culture and one of the largest entrepreneurial forces. “It must attract investment to drive growth and revenues multifold. In the line with world cities, Chennai needs investment to create world class infrastructure.”

He said challenges in health, education, water, agriculture, livelihood and energy should be addressed both in rural and urban areas. “Development is characterised by high influx of people into big towns and cities. This makes town planning critical not just for Chennai but other growing cities in the State. A holisitic approach to offer a comfortable urban lifestyle, create safe cities with affordable services, good education, reliable communication etc must be looked into as people evaluate their destination of choice based on these parameters.”

Mr. Ramadorai said the success of some recent Tamil movies reflected the customer taste ad appetite for science fiction and computer graphics. Combined with high quality technological talent available locally, the State could take leadership in becoming the preferred destination for film-related support services. Explaining his action plan for Tamil Nadu's sustainable growth, he said a centralised project monitoring system was required to track the progress of projects across the State.

Speaking on the occasion, S. Mahalingam, Chairman of ‘Connect 2011', said the global economic situation was worrying and hence the industry, which has a substantial export content, had to keep enhancing its value proposition for survival. Emphasising the need to attract research activities of global companies, he mooted for a separate department to support innovations.

T.T. Ashok, Chairman, CII (Southern Region) said the number of Indian and multinational organisations having presence in Tamil Nadu was testimony to the fact that Tamil Nadu had emerged as a hub for software, hardware and R&D.

Source: http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/chennai/article2736022.ece

Implementing an e-Learning Program

2011-12-02T02:42:00.001-08:00

When 24 hours a day is not enough, companies are seeking to push forward the boundaries of the training service they provide and to implement an e-Learning solution.

The overall goal is to offer the staff a captivating and learning-rich environment that is available anytime, anywhere, in any amount and at a lower cost. This will increase employee productivity, enhance employee skills and reduce costs.

Companies recognize that along with technologies and business practices, some skills are changing so quickly that they're outdated within a few years. In addition, the range of skills required of the average employee is increasing. In this changing environment Companies will use e-Learning to re-skill and keep pace with the changing technological and business world.

The business case for e-Learning is relatively straightforward: Cost savings of approximately 40% can be achieved by using e-Learning over classroom training. With e-Learning there is little downtime, employees can fit training into their work schedule by taking courses at their desk instead of off-site. There are also other important organizational factors that are difficult to measure such as increases in productivity, improved retention of employees, decrease in customer complaints etc. However, implementing a successful e-Learning program is a challenging undertaking. An e-Learning infrastructure must be created, that includes the ability to deliver online courses, manage and track the results. The infrastructure must also be capable of creating compelling content in a reasonable and expeditious manner either in-house or with outside vendors. More importantly the infrastructure must be flexible, easy to maintain and capable of accommodating future technical changes.

The business advantages of e-learning have to be seen according to each specific case but it is a reality that good e-learning courses allow more flexibility both for employers and for their employees since participants can reduce their time away from the job; they receive just-in-time training that can be carried out in-house and when supported by the adequate learning materials, e-learning allows learners to study in an independent manner and when their time allows them.

Implementing e-learning requires a minimum technological platform: necessary hardware, adequate telecommunication capabilities, current browser versions, access to software, etc. As part of implementing this new learning technology, and in an effort to not create distrust and frustration in employees, the organization should ensure appropriate technological capability. The system should be completely tested and user problems anticipated and addressed.

Not only is it important to think of the internal equipment and software that deliver Web-based learning, but also to think of the end-user’s office and home PCs, portable PCs, printers, phones, and vendor technology. Again, while e-learning provides cross-platform flexibility, it also requires that astute consideration be given to all the possible permutations of equipment that may be used to complete on-line coursework.

Elements of a Successful e-Learning Program

The following is a list of the key elements for the success of the e-Learning initiative:

• Company Goal: A successful e-Learning program must have a well-defined goal.
• Business Case: A compelling business case must be made to show the corporate benefits of achieving the e-Learning goals.
• Implementation Plan: A comprehensive plan must be written detailing the steps involved in implementing and providing continuing support to the e-Learning initiative.
• Phased Implementation: Implementation should be incremental. It is important to establish e-Learning “wins” early in the implementation.
• Good Implementation Team: An implementation team must be assembled that consists of management, subject matter experts and personnel from Information Technology. Selected vendors should be allowed to participate on an invited basis.
• Support Employee Adjustment: Adjustments must be made by the existing training staff and also by the learners. Good follow-up will ease the adjustment.

The following steps can help you make a business case for e-Learning

Before the e-learning course

1. Share your vision on how e-learning can add value to the business
2. Explain your strategy and way of working including the benefits and success cases
3. Map the business opportunities and threats
4. Segment those parts where e-learning can strengthen the business
5. Determine the possible economic profit and potential proportion of added value of e-learning
6. Determine the total setting in which e-learning will add value and set the requirements
7. Calculate the initial investment for e-learning based on the projected returns

During the e-Learning course

1. Determine the interdependencies with other stakeholders, factors and interventions
2. Form a steering group with stakeholders based on the interdependencies
3. Determine the lag indicators (final results)
4. Determine the performance indicators of e-learning (lead indicators)
5. Determine how the results will be presented to the main stakeholders including participants
6. Determine how the effects will be monitored and evaluated
7. Set up a data collection plan

After the e-Learning course

1. Collect and analyze the data
2. Present the results periodically to all stakeholders
3. Determine how the added value of the e-learning intervention can be optimized based on the data
4. Adjust and optimize the e-learning intervention
5. Determine the final added value and return on investment with the focus group
6. Publish or present the final results to external parties
7. Celebrate your success

Though customized e-learning trainings can meet exactly the needs of the learners and therefore have a positive impact on their efficiency, Instructor led trainings (ILT) are of course still effective ways to learn new topics and acquire new skills, especially in terms of behavioural changes but they usually result in high costs in terms of fees, travel and lodging expenses - and of course - costs resulting from the employee’s absence from the workplace.

Implementing an e-Learning program will change established practices. Some individuals will resist these changes. The key to overcoming this resistance is to establish a clear goal for the e-Learning program that delivers strong benefits and rewards. These goals should be communicated to the organization and support for the e-Learning initiative should be solicited. Implementation should proceed at a steady but deliberative pace to reduce the risk of failure and to establish early wins. The e-Learning initiative should then proceed more aggressively since e-Learning is one of the few IT investments that has been shown to deliver tangible results for a large number of organizations.

Want to be a leader in Human Resource?

2011-11-03T22:06:00.000-07:00

Human Resources or HR certification can mean many things, as there are a number of certification programs available on the market. When selecting a program however, students and professionals should keep in mind that while many programs result in certification, only a few carry significant value in the job market and world of professional employment.

Those individuals who are pursuing entry level and hourly positions within the industry may benefit greatly from the myriad of less formal HR certification programs available today. These programs can give job seekers a foot in the door, making them viable candidates for less highly skilled HR roles.

Those who wish to advance their professional careers in human resources must consider the merits of such programs more astutely, ensuring that they meet the criteria set forth by the Society of Human Resources Management (SHRM) for credible consideration by employers.

SHRM is the foremost authority in the industry as a whole, and partners with The Human Resources Certification Institute (HRCI) in establishing, tracking, and adjusting the certification criteria for professionals within the HR field.

HRCI offers four certification programs for professionals in the human resources field:

• PHR - Professional in Human Resources
• SPHR - Senior Professional in Human Resources
• GPHR - Global Professional in Human Resources
• PHR-CA and the SPHR-CA - the PHR and SPHR certifications particular to practitioners in the State of California.

As the certificate programs through HRCI require prerequisite salaried or exempt-level HR work experience requirements in addition to the passing of a hefty examination, achievement of HR certification through HRCI merits substantial consideration within the job market. Additional continuing education requirements for maintaining certification through HRCI serve to boost the standing of the achievement of such certification in the profession, requiring practitioners to maintain contemporary knowledge in the industry.

SkillSoft offers professional online training in two essential certifications: Professional in Human Resources (PHR) and Senior Professional in Human Resources (SPHR). Both represent commitment to keeping up-to-date with the latest HR trends and efficient solutions to the breadth of HR related issues. While not required everywhere, PHR and SPHR are highly respected within the HR community and some companies make it a point to only hire professionals with these qualifications.

Before opting to become a PHR or SPHR, it is key to analyze your grasp of the HR field in all its complexity and where you stand. This enables you to assess which designation is best for you.

For instance someone suited to the PHR has the following characteristics: tactical/logistical orientation; emphasis on program implementation; answerability to someone else in HR; only two to four years of general HR exposure and experience; reach is focused on the HR department rather than organization-wide; respectability through know-how and decision-making potential.

On the other hand, someone suited to the SPHR has the following traits: all-encompassing perspective; plans and designs; high up in the HR department with six to eight years of experience; mastery of general HR know-how; passes capable judgment based on exposure; grasps the internal and external impact of decisions; comprehends business at large; negotiating abilities, influence and great credibility.

Certification within a particular field of expertise is beneficial from a personal achievement perspective, allowing an individual to celebrate their own accomplishments and further their pursuit of knowledge within their chosen profession. It also indicates professional commitment, and is therefore viewed highly by current and potential employers.

Those interested in pursuing HR certification have a variety of options available to them. Selecting the appropriate program will be dependent upon career level, industry experience, and personal commitment to professional growth.

For More details click here

e-Learning Outsourcing: Advantage India

2011-10-15T03:58:00.000-07:00

In recent times, corporations, educational institutions and governments have started re-examining the way training and education are imparted. e-learning has now become a crucial part of their strategy to deliver knowledge. But maintaining e-learning systems within the organization equals more costs. The solution? Outsource, and don’t look back – more international organizations, realizing cost advantages, are moving from dealing with local e-learning service providers to directly approaching Indian companies.

Revenues from the Indian e-learning offshoring industry stand at approximately USD 341 million at the end of calendar year 2008. While the economic recession will impact the growth in the industry for the next 6-8 quarters, the market will recoup and grow much faster, until 2012. Taking these factors into account, our estimates suggest that the e-learning offshoring industry will grow at a CAGR of 15% till 2012, though growth will be more subdued till 2010. We estimates the market size to touch $603 million by the end of calendar year 2012.

e-learning has several processes that can be outsourced, which we have grouped into the following buckets - content (development and repurposing), technology (tools to create, deliver and support content), and services (consulting and support services). Their current levels of offshoring and the opportunities for the future have been discussed in the report.

Today, the Indian e-learning outsourcing industry consists of both, third-party providers and
offshore delivery centers of international e-learning providers and consulting firms. Apart from pure -play e-learning firms, companies from fields such as IT, BPO, publishing and domestic retail education have made a foray into the market, mostly in the last decade. Given the fragmented nature of the Indian industry, We estimates that there are no more than 35 e-learning providers who have more than 100 employees. There are well over a hundred other smaller providers in this space.

We have grouped the service providers in the Indian e-learning industry based on their service
capabilities and maturity. Our analysis has thrown up 4 distinct clusters, including the market
leaders - the pioneers. It is their movements that will determine the strategic direction for the rest of the players in the industry in the next 4 years.

‘e-learning Outsourcing 2009: Advantage India’, presents the competitive landscape of providers in the e-learning space in the country. It features in-depth insights and analysis, including the competitive standing of India as an outsourcing destination, the services being outsourced, the client markets, and providers and their strategies for the future. Key market trends are also discussed, in light of certain opportunities and challenges - including the implications of the global economic slowdown on the industry.

This report will help:

Corporates and academic institutions who are looking to outsource / offshore their e-learning requirements
e-learning providers to assess their competitive environment
International providers looking for Indian partners
Outsourcing consultants to evaluate and compare the offerings of Indian providers
Researchers and academicians looking for detailed information on e-learning outsourcing

The report is based on secondary information as well as extensive interviews with a number of e-Learning service providers in India.

For more information click here

Cloud computing and Higher Education Adoption

2011-06-28T23:28:00.000-07:00

Cloud computing is a term you can see being used a lot, but there is a lack of clarity about precisely what cloud computing is?

However, most of us are probably making use of the cloud without realising that this is the case; whenever we access our Gmail or Hotmail accounts, or upload a photo to Facebook, we are using
the cloud. The potential benefits and risks, however, are more apparent. We will try and shed some light on defining cloud computing and then explore the opportunities and risks that adoption poses, with particular focus on (higher) education institutions.

Defining the cloud

Broadly, the cloud can be described as on-demand computing, for anyonewith a network connection. Access to applications and data anywhere, anytime, from any device is the potential outcome. The consumer-level cloud is a good starting point for this – sites like Flickr and Facebook act as digital repositories for data and we can access this data from any internet-enabled device, from our iPhones to our desktop computers. In the case of Flickr and the like, storage of our digital images is, from the consumer point of view, somewhere in the cloud. We don’t need to know where specifically, we just need our Flickr login credentials and a web connection. We can see this model as evident in web-based email too.

The benefits of the cloud

In many senses the primary advantages the cloud brings are to do with cost and efficiency, which are closely intertwined. Essentially the capital costs of computing can de done away with if an organisation relies on the public cloud, buying virtual server time and storage space on demand. Expenditure on IT becomes operational, rather than capital. Moreover, the physical space required for racks of servers is no longer necessary and the organisation no longer incurs energy costs for running and cooling its servers.

Why Is Cloud Computing Important?

McKinsey suggests that “using clouds for computing tasks promises a revolution in IT similar to the birth of the web and e-commerce.”7 Burton Group concludes that “IT is finally catching up with the Internet by extending the enterprise outside of the traditional data center walls.”8 Writers like Nicholas Carr argue that a so-called big switchis ahead, wherein a great many infrastructure, application, and support tasks now operated by enterprises will in the future be handled by very-large-scale, highly standardized counterpart activities delivered over the Internet.

The prospect of a maturing cloud of on-demand infrastructure, application, and support services is important as a possible means of:

• Driving down the capital and total costs of IT in higher education

• Facilitating the transparent matching of IT demand, costs, and funding

• Scaling IT

• Fostering further IT standardization

• Accelerating time to market by reducing IT supply bottlenecks

• Countering or channeling the ad hoc consumerization of enterprise IT services

• Increasing access to scarce IT talent

Adoption of Cloud Computing in Higher Education

In many technology arenas, higher education exhibits two behaviors. As regards networking and high-performance computing, higher education enjoys a reputation as an innovator. The world’s first computers were developed at Harvard, MIT, the University of Manchester, and the University of Pennsylvania, and the first four nodes of the Arpanet were located at UCLA, Stanford Research Institute, UC Santa Barbara, and the University of Utah. Research universities, often in concert with the National Science Foundation, continue to lead the way in networking (NSFnet, Vbns, Internet2, NLR) and in supercomputing, where 25 of the top 100 supercomputers are operated at universities.

On the other hand, higher education is a relative late adopter in the applications and IT support arena. This relates chiefly to the unique policy environment that regulates the acquisition, storage, and dissemination of higher education information (FERPA, HIPAA, GLB, and others) and also to a unique perspective that arises from viewing one’s organization as perpetual. On a less noble note, colleges and universities rarely account for the total cost of delivering IT infrastructure, services, and support and rarely pay for key cost drivers such as space and utilities directly and hence have no easy means of comparing the costs of self-operation and sourcing alternatives. Colleges and universities also have legitimate and pressing IT security concerns and a high sensitivity to adversepublicity.

Online IIBA™ CBAP™ Certification in India

2011-04-04T23:53:00.000-07:00

Today there is a strong demand of individuals who can identify business needs, devise solutions and translate them into information technology specifications that enable enterprises to achieve desired goals. Such individuals also known as business analyst (BA) or IT business analyst can work in different industries and may have different titles and roles such as Business Consultant, Business Process Analyst, Data Analyst, Systems Analyst, Business Architect or Requirements Analyst. Their basic job involves acting as a bridge between the core business needs of the enterprise and the technology. They work on IT development and testing projects, identify, communicate and manage the risks associated with projects. If you are an IT professional, programmer, system analysts, project manager or entry level IT business analysts with analytical bent of mind interested in business management and development then the leap into the role of business analyst is best for you. As a BA you not only gain an extra edge in terms of enhanced skills, job prospects and career growth but also a remarkable hike in salary and packages.

Business Analysis is among the top desired skills for tech workers. Corporate giants today are looking for trained buisness analysts. International Institute of Business Analysis' (IIBA) CBAP (Certified Business Analysis Professional) is an Industry Accepted Certification, which establishes an individual as a thorough Business Analyst and provides the opportunity to work with highly professional groups.

Generally companies hire a person with strong analytical skills and technical background with or without an MBA degree. A BA has to often overlap into the roles of project manager and consultant. The International Institute of Business Analysis (IIBA) through its CBAP (Certified Business Analysis Professional) program provides a certification program for business analysts, as well as a body of knowledge (Business Analysis Body of Knowledge, BABOK) for the field. The certification is recognised and the expertise gained through it is valued by companies all over the world. A certified business analyst becomes an expert in handling business needs of an organisation and determining best solutions.

Our online courses on IIBA are packaged into the following modules

Introduction to Business Analysis and Essential Competencies

Introduction to Business Analysis Planning

Planning Business Analysis Communication and Monitoring

Business Analysis Requirements Elicitation

Business Analysis Requirements Management and Communication

Business Analysis: Enterprise Analysis

Business Analysis: Introduction to Requirements Analysis

Business Analysis: Verify and Validate Requirements

Business Analysis: Solution Assessment and Validation.

For more details of our online certification training packages, click here

Six Sigma - Quality Certification

2011-02-10T01:21:00.000-08:00

Six Sigma is all about delivering business excellence, higher customer satisfaction, and superior profits by dramatically improving every process in an enterprise from financial to operational to production. Six Sigma has become a darling of a wide spectrum of industries, from health care to insurance to telecommunications to software and now into education system.

What is Six Sigma?

It is important to recall that every customer always values consistent and predicable services and/or products with near zero defects. Therefore they experience the variation and not the mean. Mean is their expectation or our target.

If we can measure process variations that cause defects i.e. unacceptable deviation from the mean or target, we can work towards systematically managing the variation to eliminate defects.
How does Six Sigma work?The driving force behind any Six Sigma project comes from its primary focus - "bringing breakthrough improvements in a systematic manner by managing variation and reducing defects". This requires us to ask tougher questions, raise the bar significantly, and force people to think out of the box and to be innovative. The objective is to stretch, stretch mentally and not physically. To make this journey successful there is a methodology(s) to support Six Sigma implementations.

There are 2 potential scenarios - (a) there is already an existing process(s) that is working "reasonably" well and (b) there is no process at all. A bad process is as good as no process.

Scenario (a) focuses on significant process improvements and requires use of DMAIC:

Define process goals in terms of key critical parameters (i.e. critical to quality or critical to production) on the basis of customer requirements or Voice Of Customer (VOC)
Measure the current process performance in context of goals
Analyze the current scenario in terms of causes of variations and defects
Improve the process by systematically reducing variation and eliminating defects
Control future performance of the process Scenario

(b) focuses on process design using Design For Six Sigma (DFSS) approach. DFSS typically requires IDOV:

Identify process goals in terms of critical parameters, industry & competitor benchmarks, VOC Design involves enumeration of potential solutions and selection of the best
Optimize performance by using advanced statistical modeling and simulation techniques and design refinements
Validate that design works in accordance to the process goals

Online Resource to Master SixSigma

SixSigma KnowledgeCenter - Offering immediate access to a wealth of comprehensive reference materials, topical spotlights, and ongoing automatic content updates, the SixSigma KnowledgeCenter facilitates both on-the-job learning and more formal instruction. SixSigma KnowledgeCenter is a one-stop skills improvement center for Project Managers at all levels.

From the SixSigma KnowledgeCenter, you can access the following learning resources:

Books24x7
Featured Topic
Practice Labs and Certification MaintenanceExternal Resources

Contact Virtuosity for more details about this training program. It is completely online and very cost effective.

GLOBAL CERTIFICATION IN INDIA

2010-09-09T23:24:00.000-07:00

Importance of International Certifications in India

The current educational scenario in India is quite diverse and there are significant variations to be seen in the range as well as quality of education. While on one hand we have the pillars of higher education like the IIT’s, we have also in recent times come across some not so good institutions. This is on the academic front and there are larger variations in the area of professional training as well. The range of education on offer is also expanding but most of this is non-mainstream and so difficult to standardise. Given this, it becomes difficult for employers to pin point on quality and create a skills base when there are huge fluctuations. For a student and his parent, on the verge of deciding on a career, while the choices seem varied, decisions are difficult to take and trust in an educator/trainer gets tough to come by.

The situation in some other countries is quite different. Education, there, is quite systematised with standard processes for quality assurance. The pedagogy and assessment methodologies are also quite evloved and not confined to rote, theoretical learning. There are bridges between voational education and formal academic streams and vice versa. All these bestow a certain consistency and quality in the education and training being imparted to students, raising skill levels. Translation of these positives into reality in India is one of the primary benefits of international education and certification.

Quality certification

Having an international certificate, whether achieved abroad or through quality assured institutions in India, always bestows a high standard to a student. It is proof of a level of skill benchmarked to international standards and opens up a lot of avenues for students in India and abroad. There is a broad range of certifications available in a variety of areas and at every level. Students can study for certification in traditional area like IT, management, engineering to retail, aviation, fashion and even in niche areas like performing arts, beauty therapy and sports and exercise science.

The other significant advantage of international certification is the global recognition it carries and in its opening doors for further education abroad. International certifications, which are offered in many countries, offer instant recognition from employers in those countries, offer instant regcognition from employers in those countries and make it easier to get a job. Some international courses offered in India also open the doors to further education in universities abroad.In recent times it has become easier for students to obtain an international certification in our country. There are few institution like Virtuosity who offer their programmes and certification and also there are certifying or awarding bodies who offer qualifications and courses through Indian partners that students can take up. These courses in India rigorously assure quality and students can be certain of getting world-class education.

Virtuosity IT learning solutions are structured customized training program for college students offering Global IT Certification. There are 122 IT certification courses to name a few; we conduct training for Oracle, Microsoft, CISCO, ITIL and Sun Java global certifications and 13 Global business certifications like 6 sigma, PMI, PMP, ITIL and IIBA to name a few. The highlights of the programs are listed below.

Global employability courses at an affordable cost
To prepare students towards international certifications
Combined with practical and mock tests
Evolve individual career growth path
Inspire the participants to be future Global leader

Contact Virtuosity for more details on getting a global certification.

ITIL Certification Training - Online!

2010-08-09T00:33:00.001-07:00

Learning the Process of Information Technology

According to WIKI definition, The Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) is a set of concepts and practices for Information Technology Services Management (ITSM), Information Technology (IT) development and IT operations.

ITIL gives detailed descriptions of a number of important IT practices and provides comprehensive checklists, tasks and procedures that any IT organization can tailor to its needs. ITIL is published in a series of books, each of which covers an IT management topic. The names ITIL and IT Infrastructure Library are registered trademarks of the United Kingdom's Office of Government Commerce (OGC).

ITIL in India is set for an explosive growth over the next 5 to 10 years. India is an emerging economy with a gross domestic product growth the same as China, Hong Kong and Taiwan.
The only country after China to have over 1 billion people India is still in desperate need of physical infrastructure (roads, highways) that will connect the huge cities that currently have vibrant economies in their own right. ITIL in Indian business is already starting to be gradually adopted and the potential for the defacto standard in IT Service Management is huge.

The ITIL Certification structure is broadly as follows:

The Foundation Certificate enables people to understand the terminology used within ITIL. It focuses on foundation knowledge with regard to the ITIL Service Support and Service Delivery sets as well as generic ITIL philosophy and background. It is a prerequisite for the Practitioner's and Manager's Certificates in IT Service Management.

The Practitioner Certificate focuses upon the understanding and application of the specific processes within the IT Service Management discipline.

The Manager's Certificate is aimed at experienced professionals, who will be involved in managing service management functions.

ITIL Foundation Certification (v3) Available Online

Training for the ITIL Foundation Certificate can be approached in a number of ways. Traditionally, however, these tend to bring challenges of their own. For example, classroom training has to be scheduled, planned, prepared for, and is usually expensive.

Fortunately, there is a way: the Online Self-Learning Course.

The ITIL Foundation certification from Virtuosity has been designed from top down to make ITIL training as convenient and interesting as possible. It comprises a series of high quality items, each created to deliver (and re-enforce) the knowledge required to pass the foundation exam with distinction.

Self-Learning Course

The ITIL Self-Learning Course puts you in control of the process. You can study when you want and where you wish: all the materials are at your finger tips.

Note also that this is an ITIL Version 3 course: the very latest release of the IT Infrastructure Library. This could hardly be more straight forward. Simply purchase the course via contactus page, and then download it to your PC or learn online.

2010-07-18T10:04:00.000-07:00

PROJECT MANAGEMENT AND ITS ESSENTIALS

Project management is the discipline of planning, organizing, and managing resources to bring about the successful completion of specific project goals and objectives. It is sometimes conflated with program management, however technically a program is actually a higher level construct: a group of related and somehow interdependent projects.

A project is a temporary endeavor, having a defined beginning and end (usually constrained by date, but can be by funding or deliverables, undertaken to meet unique goals and objectives, usually to bring about beneficial change or added value. The temporary nature of projects stands in contrast to business as usual (or operations), which are repetitive, permanent or semi-permanent functional work to produce products or services. In practice, the management of these two systems is often found to be quite different, and as such requires the development of distinct technical skills and the adoption of separate management.

The project management process group refers specifically the idea of a logic oriented grouping or arrangement of the numerous project management processes as per the concepts laid out in the PMBOK guide. There a very lengthy list of individual process groups that must be accounted for when attempting to succinctly and accurately lay them all out, These include those of the early stage initiating processes, the planning processes, any of the many executing processes that the project manager or project management team determine to be relevant, any communication processes that are determined may be helpful, controlling and monitoring processes that may be needed, and at the conclusion of the event in question, any closing processes. It is important to always utilize the processes for each project in the proper, and usually predetermined order, as this sequential and repetitive routine and pattern tends to offer substantial benefits toward organization, and can be applied to any application area or life cycle.

This term is defined in the 3rd and the 4th edition of the PMBOK. Virtuosity offers online training on project management with one third of the market price. This is aligned according to the 4th edition of the Project Management Body of Knowledge.

Online Course Structure Modules

Project Management Essentials - (PMBOK® Guide - Fourth Edition-aligned)
Managing Projects within Organizations
Project Management Overview
Project Management Process Groups
Project Integration Management (PMBOK® Guide - Fourth Edition-aligned)
Integrated Initiation and Planning
Integrated Project Execution, Monitoring, and Control
Integrated Project Change Control and Close
Project Scope Management (PMBOK® Guide - Fourth Edition-aligned)
Project Requirements and Defining Scope
Create Work Breakdown Structure
Monitoring and Controlling Project Scope
Project Time Management (PMBOK® Guide - Fourth Edition-aligned)
Defining and Sequencing Project Activities
Estimating Activity Resources and Durations
Developing and Controlling the Project Schedule
Project Cost Management (PMBOK® Guide - Fourth Edition-aligned)
Estimating and Budgeting
Project Costs Controlling Costs
Project Quality Management (PMBOK® Guide - Fourth Edition-aligned)
Project Quality Planning
Quality Assurance and Quality Control
Project Human Resource Management (PMBOK® Guide - Fourth Edition-aligned)
Planning Project Human Resources
Managing Project Human Resources
Planning and Managing Project Human Resources Simulation
Project Communications Management (PMBOK® Guide - Fourth Edition-aligned)
Stakeholders and the Communication Management Plan
Processes for Managing Project Communications
Communicating Effectively with Project Stakeholders Simulation
Project Risk Management (PMBOK® Guide - Fourth Edition-aligned)
Risk Management Planning
Performing Risk Analysis
Risk Response, Monitor, and Control
Identifying Project Risks
Project Procurement Management (PMBOK® Guide - Fourth Edition-aligned)
Planning Project Procurement
Managing Procurements
Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct (PMI® Standard-aligned)
The Role of Ethics in Project Management
Core PMI® Values and Ethical Standards

Contact virtuosity for more details and the course registration.

Email: contactus@virtuosity.ac

The Franchising World Magazine - Education Special Issue

2010-04-12T06:05:00.000-07:00

The Franchising World, India’s leading franchise magazine in its April Special Issue on Education Industry, has featured Virtuosity on the cover as one of the top 4 education ventures in India.

Virtuosity is a complete knowledge management, education and training company, pioneering Technology-aided, Global Learning Solutions in the Indian Academia, ushering in a new era of globally contemporary, boundary less, anytime anywhere learning opportunities for learners across the country.

Virtuosity offers suitable skills enhancement and measurement solutions for all job functions in IT, ITES & BFSI sectors, totaling to about 74% of hiring in the country.

Virtuosity has four baskets of portfolios: Manus, Technicus, Librus & Expertus.

Manus offers Business & Management Skills and therefore focuses on working with MBA Schools. Manus enables the institution and students with a library of 2800 Courses, 13 Business Certifications with Online Mentoring, Business Pro Books Collection, 130+ Skill Sims and 12 exclusive Knowledge Centers. We also offer the MBA schools as exclusive Leadership Development Channel with 1000+ Video lectures by world’s best Business Guru’s, CEO’s & Management Author on varied topics and expertise. Once a month we also have a Live Connect event with one such personality. The idea is to give our students here global exposure and an opportunity for them to interact with Industry leaders.

Technicus offers Information Technology Skills and therefore focuses on working with Engineering Institutions, and other Arts & Science colleges with IT Aspirants.
Under Technicus we have 2500 Courses, 122 IT Certifications with Test Preps and Online Mentoring, 10 exclusive Knowledge Centers with Practice Labs and Project Centers. Our solutions ensure acquisition of practical skills happen through the course of learning, therefore making the learner professionally skilled.

Librus is a digital library solution with more than 30,000 titles in 15 Collections from 100+ of the world’s most renowned publishers and authors. With rising infrastructure costs, and the explosion of resources available to the students, Librus offers a cost effective and efficient Library solution. What’s more, the Library follows the students wherever they go.

Expertus offers more than 300+ domain specific Technical Skills Assessments and also 200+ Job specific Aptitude and Psychometric tests. Our tests use a Human Intelligence Database for Adaptive Testing and produce highly detailed and accurate graphical reporting of one’s skill levels. Thus these tests enable the institution’s to assess their graduates ‘employability’ using tests that are industry benchmarked.

Virtuosity on The Franchising World

Virtuosity is currently looking for Channel Partners across India to spread the wings in serving Indian Academia thru TLA (Teaching, Learning and Assessment).

Digital Books Collections for Business Professionals

2010-03-24T22:18:00.000-07:00

This post is in continuation to the previous post and I would like to give more clarity on the digital books solution from SkillSoft which we are discussing. Book24x7 has more than 10 collections overall and first five important collections like Business Pro, Engineering Pro, IT Pro, Finance Pro and Executive summary will be discussed in my each post respectively.

BusinessPro from SkillSot
BusinessPro is a collection of digital books which is the definitive resource for on-demand learning across all corporate functions and includes thousands of business titles from the most reputable publishers and authors in the industry. BusinessPro accelerates the acquisition of business knowledge, sharpens management acumen and inspiresprofessional development – thus supporting critical initiatives, such as, project management, leadership development, quality management, organizational development, customer relationship management, career advancement, and many other strategic issues.

BusinessPro delivers instant, fully searchable access to best-in-class content of thousands of titles from leading publishers in a Web-based environment. Because the scope of the collection is both broad and deep, it addresses a vast range of issues critical to today’s business student and professionals -- from corporate case studies to the latest trends on leadership, from Six Sigma to OSHA regulations, and from project management to time management. Whether used stand-alone, in conjunction with corporate training programs, or integrated with knowledge management initiatives, BusinessPro is an essential tool for every business professional.

Access to the full text of thousands of titles
With BusinessPro users/students can search, browse and view every word, graphic, illustration and table from thousands of business titles. Books24x7 adds new titles to the collection weekly, which ultimately encourages professionals to continually develop their business skills. In addition, new publishers are constantly being added to the collection to ensure the breadth, depth and diversity of the offering. The Books24x7 On Demand Platform offers many powerful features including a patented search engine, Books24x7 On the Go™ mobile access, collaboration functionality, usage reporting, RSS feeds and many other capabilities to make a business professional more efficient and successful in their endeavors.

Support your critical initiatives with BusinessPro

• Quality Management
Many of today’s successful companies utilize disciplined methodologies such as Six Sigma and Lean -- to implement quality management and cost control procedures. BusinessPro provides an extensive collection of titles that can be used to support these initiatives, thus ensuring an organization is current on the most recent concepts and practices.
• Project Management
In addition to being an invaluable reference tool for project management professionals, BusinessPro can also support them in their continuing certification requirement as a self-directed learning activity. With 300+ project management titles from top publishers – including the Project Management Institute (PMI) – BusinessPro can assist a project manager as they continue to learn and perfect their skills.
• Leadership Development
Top executives recognize that leadership development is a strategic initiative necessary to ensure the longevity and success of their company. BusinessPro is the only on demand, full-text resource available to support this initiative with titles from the most respected executive-focused publishers – Harvard Business School Press, Oxford University Press, McGraw-Hill, AMACOM and many others.
• Selling Skills
Cold calling, networking, negotiating, account management – these are just some of the skills your sales team needs to meet their quota. BusinessPro can help them land that next big deal with full-text books on sales strategies – such as solution selling, dimensional selling and consultative selling – and advice from the most respected authors, including Stephan Schiffman and Jeff Thull.

Below image will give the indicative figure of BusinessPro collection and its sub category.

Reach out Virtuosity - SkillSoft's indian partner for more details contactus@virtuosity.ac

Need of Books Digitalization in Academia

2010-03-04T03:46:00.000-08:00

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Over the past few years, libraries throughout the world have been in a state of transformation as a result of the impact of information technology. No area of the library has remained untouched. The impact on collections, services, staff, and facilities has had major ramifications on budgets, planning, and training. Thus the concept of Digital Library has come which focus on access and service not on buildings and volume. Libraries should support users in their searching and acquiring of information and their organization will reflect services rather than physical location.
Technology, law and economics are all becoming more important for libraries requiring new expertise in library staff. Perhaps the most important issues for the long term will be the ability of libraries to co-operate in the delivery of the new services.

Rapid change in today's education environment puts student under constant pressure and mounting demands. Students need to know more and do more, frequently learning as they go. Support your students in navigating the speed of change by providing quick and ready access to trusted industry knowledge.

Academic/Library Market

The Challenge

In today's rapidly changing climate, acquiring, building and maintaining collections to support your academic environment can be daunting and risky. With so many areas of study and burgeoning fields of expertise, your student population needs anytime, anywhere access to an ever expanding, changing, and always current resource.

The Problem

Building, maintaining and refreshing collections to encompass the variety of subject areas can easily exceed tight library budgets, forcing a constraint on book acquisitions severely restricting the depth and breadth of collection coverage.
Having to limit and, therefore, select the 'right' titles for your library collections from the thousands that are available unavoidably restricts subject coverage and overlooks the needs of some of your patron population.
Predicting your collection's shelf life by monitoring currency and obsolescence is time-consuming, unending and unrealistic.
Keeping titles on the shelves and readily available requires multiple copy purchases.
Ensuring your students have access whenever they need it can mean extending the library's hours of service.
Integrating new solutions into existing ones is costly and time-consuming.

The Solution

Support the learning experiences of your patron population with immediate anytime, anywhere access to thousands of titles from industry's top publishers with the Books24x7 On Demand Platform.

Take the guesswork out of collection building and management with unobstructed access to collections that have been developed by experts and include content from the best publishers and authors.
Address the needs of your entire population with collections that offer depth and breadth of topical coverage, skill level and learning perspective.
Keep collections current with new content that is automatically added each week.
Manage budgets by eliminating the need to replace lost, stolen, or damaged titles.
Eliminate the need for purchasing multiple copies with simultaneous access to the same titles.
Keep library collections available beyond closing hours with access through the library's network.
Easily integrate the Books24x7 On Demand platform with existing library systems.

Whether your patrons are students preparing for their professional careers, faculty developing curriculum or staff managing work-related challenges, Books24x7 can help them to increase their knowledge, enhance their learning experience, and support them in their everyday activities.

Books 24x7 – Complete Digital Library from Virtuosity

Books24x7, the largest online digital library is driven by a singular mission to provide organizations with critical reference material that enhances productivity and learning. Books24x7 offers the industry’s best professional reference books, research reports and documentation. The web-based platform enables users to browse, read, search, and collaborate without the aid of any proprietary or plug-in technologies. The unabridged books are fully searchable and relevant pages can be bookmarked for future reference. The employees can create their own libraries comprising bookshelves of the various types of books.

Books24x7 has over 30,000+ digitized reference books, research reports, documentation and articles. The content is updated daily and new books are added to the library catalog regularly. So you can obtain any book on any topic, whenever you want to — whether it is on IT, Engineering, Business or Finance.

ITPro from Books24x7 covers over 100 different topics on information technology from the traditional to the emerging. Most of the content available is a direct outcome of user requests and is applications specific.
EngineeringPro is packed with reference material covering a wide range of engineering disciplines as well as reference topics important to tackle daily engineering challenges.
BusinessPro deals with all aspects of corporate performance support, professional development and key business topics. You can avail of numerous corporate case studies and pick up valuable tricks of the trade.
FinancePro is a storehouse of valuable financial information on Accounting, Planning, Budgeting, Auditing, Compliance and much more.

Reach Virtuosity by contacting them on email @ contactus@virtuosity.ac or call the representative @ 044-42068805 for more details.

Employability Skills

2010-02-18T01:52:00.000-08:00

What Are Employability Skills?

The two greatest concerns of employers today are finding good workers and training them. The difference between the skills needed on the job and those possessed by applicants, sometimes called the skills-gap, is of real concern to human resource managers and business owners looking to hire competent employees. While employers would prefer to hire people who are trained and ready to go to work, they are usually willing to provide the specialized, job-specific training necessary for those lacking such skills.

Most discussions concerning today’s workforce eventually turn to employability
skills. Finding workers who have employability or job readiness skills that help them fit into and remain in the work environment is a real problem. Employers need reliable, responsible workers who can solve problems and who have the social skills and attitudes to work together with other workers. Creativity, once a trait avoided by employers who used a cookie cutter system, is now prized among employers who are trying to create the empowered, high performance workforce needed for competitiveness in today’s marketplace. Employees with these skills are in demand and are considered valuable human capital assets to companies.

Employability skills are those basic skills necessary for getting, keeping, and doing well on a job. These are the skills, attitudes and actions that enable workers to get along with their fellow workers and supervisors and to make sound, critical decisions. Unlike occupational or technical skills, employability
skills are generic in nature rather than job specific and cut across all industry types, business sizes, and job levels from the entry-level worker to the senior-most position.

What specifically are those skills, attitudes and actions, i.e., employability skills, necessary for getting, keeping, and doing well on a job? Employability skills, while categorized in many different ways, are generally divided into three skill sets: (a) basic academic skills, (b) higher-order thinking skills and (c) personal qualities. The three skill sets are typically broken down into more detailed skill sets

Although the academic skill level required by some entry-level jobs may be low, basic academic skills are still essential for high job performance. Ideally, new hires will have the ability and will want to learn. They also need the ability to listen to and read instructions and then to carry out those instructions. When asked for information, these individuals should be able to respond appropriately both orally and in writing, including recording and relaying information. Reading ability includes comprehending what has been read and using a variety of written materials, including graphs, charts, tables and displays. Entry level employees also need the ability to complete basic math computations accurately.

Perhaps even more important to job success than having good basic academic skills is having good higher-order thinking skills. The ability to think, reason, and make sound decisions is crucial for employees desiring to do well and advance. A person who can think critically, act logically, and evaluate situations to make decisions and solve problems, is a valuable asset. Application of higher order thinking skills in the use of technology, instruments, tools and information systems takes these higher order skills to a new level making the employee even more valuable. Employers will usually try to help valued employees seek and get more advanced training, thus widening the gap between those with higher order skills and those possessing basic academic skills alone.

If basic academic skills and higher order thinking skills are so important, why then are employers deeply concerned with personal skills? Because in most jobs, it is difficult to utilize workers effectively who lack personal skills. Entry-level
employees with good personal skills have confidence in themselves and deal with others honestly and openly, displaying respect for themselves, their co-workers, and their supervisors regardless of other people’s diversity and individual differences. They view themselves as a part of a team and are willing to work within the culture of the group. They have a positive attitude and take the initiative to learn new things to get the job done. Rather than blaming others when things go wrong, they are accountable for their actions. They also have the ability to set goals and priorities in their work and personal lives so that resources of time, money and other resources may be conserved and managed.

These individuals practice good personal habits, come to work as scheduled, on time and dressed appropriately, and are agreeable to change when necessary.

Virtuosity India’s premier Skill Development company offer industry required training using ICT technology and with internationally recognized content from SkillSoft. The TLA (Teaching, Learning and Assessment) process currently serving educational institutions in Tamilnadu and spreading the wings pan India now.

Contact virtuoisty's representative to get more details about this employability skills training @ contactus@virtuosity.ac or reach them @ 044-42068805.

TOP 50 B-School in India - Review by Careers360

2010-02-04T21:58:00.000-08:00

Careers360 a magazine from Pathfinder Publishing Pvt. Ltd focusing on education, career planning, and professional guidance market space addressing the youth and young professionals in the 17-35 age bracket. Recently they short listed 136 institutions, identified from the last five years’ rankings conducted by four magazines. They wrote to each B-School, requesting them to participate in their review and ranking exercise for the top 50 B-School in India.

The process was two-fold. They visited each institute, with an express intention to review the campus, the kind of facilities available, the resources, faculty etc, and also to check/ verify the available data. Interacted with the head of the institution, faculty, staff and the students out of the 54 institutions visited, 12 institutions did not provide data, so they were left out of the rankings.

The rankings were based on the following criteria read as Input, Process and Output.

Virtuosity Skill Development, India's exclusive academic partner of SkillSoft, welcomes the review made by Careers360 Magazine and Congratulate the winners for being listed in top 50 B-School. Virtuosity also adds that Indian institution's progress towards strengthening the education pedagogy is so promising and highly appreciates the reception they received for their TLA (Teaching, Learning and Assessment) process with a blend of eLearning solutions from SkillSoft, IKM and Walden.

They also claim by implementing the TLA process B-Schools would certainly accumulate scores on below areas as the learning solution from TLA is unique, international quality with accreditations, improves student faculty culture of communication, adding strength to the existing curriculum, better visibility and recognition.

Learning Resources 20
Detailed Course Structure 25
Unique Learning Methodology 20
Course Offerings 25
Student-Faculty Exchange 40
Accreditation 20
Publication in international Journals 20
Publication in international Journals 10
Return On Investment 50

Here is the list of top 50 B-Schools from Careers360.

Reach Virtuosity for the TLA Service @ contactus@virtuosity.ac

Alpha Foundation joins hand with Agaram Foundation

2010-01-15T21:54:00.001-08:00

On the harvest day of Pongal, Alpha Foundation with other 9 members & Agaram join hands to sow the seeds of education. A movement called ‘Vidhai’ is to generate that would pool corpus to help students to achieve their academic goals.

Joining this initiative with their valuable contributions are Erode Sakthi Masala owner Mr. Duraiswamy, Ms. Shanthi Duraiswamy, Mafoi Mr. K.Pandiyarajan, Ms. Latha Pandiyarajan, Tiruchi Alpha Foundation Dr. Pazani, Ramraj Cotton Mr. Nagaraj, Mr. Satuyamurthy, Mr. Varun, Akshaya Homes Mr. Chittibabu, Bharathy Cements together have raised a fund of Rs. 1 crore. This money would be used for theeducation of the needy students who would want to pursue their higher education.

“Agaram acts as bridge to connect the deserving students and those who are willing to provide money for the student’s”, comments Actor Surya, the founder of Agaram.

“Agaram Foundation would choose the deserving students at the end of this academic year and the students would be funded completely for their higher education - be it Engineering or Medicine or any course of the student’s choice from the fund that is collected. Also the chosen students would be constantly monitored on a regular basis and the panel of members who would be choosing these deserving students would be retired Headmaster’s and School Principal’s”, continues Surya.

According to Dr R. Palani, Chairman, Alpha Foundation, the opportunity to introduce SkillSoft's expertise into the organisation's unique online education, training and networking solution was a strategic and fundamental step forward in reducing the extreme skill set shortage in India.

"India's education system is facing serious challenges - poor literacy, lack of education accessibility and technical training. That is why the SkillSoft union with Virtuosity could not come at a better time," he said.

Virtuosity is offering international quality courseware and digital referenceware at affordable cost for Indian institution. Interested institution may contact the Virtuosity team at contactus@virtuosity.ac

WATCH IT ON YOUTUBE

Working towards Building a Skilled India

SkillSoft Awarded Two Top Awards from Elearning! Magazine

2010-01-11T05:22:00.000-08:00

SkillSoft - Leading e-learning content provider and performance support solutions company, has received two prestigious awards from leading US magazine, Elearning! Magazine. SkillSoft has been named the provider of the Best IT Content for the SkillChoice IT Collection and the provider of the Best Soft Skills Training for the SkillChoice Business Collection for 2009.

For the fifth consecutive year, SkillSoft has been named a Best of Elearning! Award honouree. SkillSoft is one of only four companies to have been recognised every year since the program’s inception.

Additionally, SkillSoft is being recognised for the second year running as an honouree in both the Best IT Content category and for Best Soft Skills Training.

“We value these awards because they’re a reflection of what real customers think and they serve to validate the effectiveness of our content development methodologies,” said Julie Ogilvie, Vice President of Corporate Marketing for SkillSoft. “Our products have been developed from the ground up with customer involvement, so this is a sign that we’re hitting the mark as far as product quality and service is concerned.”

Award winners are chosen by readers nominating products and solutions via online balloting from Elearning! Magazine. The program received 1,755 nominations, more than twice the amount received last year. The December/January issue of Elearning! Magazine will also highlight SkillSoft’s wins.

"The Best of Elearning! Awards program is the only reader's choice awards in the market and they offer a great barometer on the pulse of the learning industry," said Catherine Upton, group publisher of eLearning! Magazine. "Reader recognition is growing in importance now that more companies opt to implement e-learning."

Virtuosity is very glad to have them as a solution partner in india for institutions and expecting to work with them closely on indian academia requirement.

To know more details about SkillSoft eLearning solutions contact Virtuosity.

HAVE A GREAT YEAR AHEAD!!!

2009-12-31T23:09:00.000-08:00

Lets all take a resolution of going GREEN on what ever we dealt with, being a product, service or simple routine life activities, lets be specific in supporting our eco system.

Again wishing you all a very happy and prosperous new year!

PowerPoint to Flash - The Need

2009-12-18T03:18:00.001-08:00

Off late there are lot of conversion tool emerged in the market to convert Microsoft applications output to a web based output especially Flash based output. Example why would you ever want to convert a PowerPoint presentation into a Flash File?

Here is a detailed list of the key advantages for converting a PowerPoint presentation into a Flash file. No matter what your final goal is, a Flash-based presentation goes a long way in making your content easily accessible and distributable.

1) Greater Accessibility
Once converted to Flash, anyone can easily view a PowerPoint presentation in any Internet browser. Internet Explorer, Mozilla, Netscape, Safari, Opera, and others. As more than 98% of all browsers have the Flash plug-in installed. You aren't required to install any special software or tell your audience to do the same.

2) Compatibility
Everyone who has a computer including those on Macs, Linux, Solaris, HP, SGI workstations, PDAs (PocketPCs/Windows Mobile and PalmOS), and handheld devices (with an integrated Flash player) can watch your PowerPoint in Flash. There's no limit in terms of devices or computer operating systems.

3) Reduced Files Size
A PowerPoint presentation converted to Flash can drastically reduce the size up to 1/10th of the original file size.

4) Sound Integration
Flash files can also integrate audio tracks, including music and voice-overs.

5) Display Resolution
Flash files can be played at virtually any resolution and/or screen size, making this file format an ideal way to distribute presentations across many display devices.

6) Internet Distribution
Distributing PowerPoint files on the Internet for other people to see is easier said than done. Not everyone has PowerPoint installed on his PC. But once you upload a Flash file to any server, forum and discussion group, anyone can watch it.

7) Streaming
Flash files use streaming technology that allows online viewers to start watching the presentation without waiting for the entire presentation to download before playback begins.

8) Basic Interaction Controls
Flash files contain optional embedded controls that let the end user control playback, stop and rewind the presentation.

9) More Distribution Options
Flash, for the reasons previously listed, is also an ideal format for distributing PowerPoint presentations on CD-ROMs. It allows multi-platform compatibility while providing a lean and fast performing file. It can also integrate audio and video while displayed on different displays and resolutions.

10) Email-Ready
Even if you want to send a PowerPoint file to someone by email, converting it to Flash may be a better option. The file size is smaller, and it doesn't clog your recipient's inbox. You also retain all of your transitions, animations and effects, while ensuring that the recipient can see the file without loading other software (for example, PowerPoint Viewer, which is 2.7 MB).

11) Secure
Others can edit PowerPoint files if they have PowerPoint installed on their machine. This is not the case for Flash files. However, they allow you to maintain more control over your content, if needed.

12) Firewall Friendliness
Flash-based content has no problem going through firewalls because it's like standard Web content.

13) Tracking and Reporting
By publishing the content using SCORM/AICC standard and delivering via Learning Management System will help the authors to get hold of the content and they will be able to track the user progress and generate required reports.

When it comes to e-learning, iSpring PRESENTER is one of the smartest elearning authoring tools you will find. It transforms your regular PowerPoint presentation into a SCORM/AICC compliant Flash elearning course, ready for publishing to a Learning Management Systems (LMS). iSpring elearning software also provides you with a quiz authoring tool to further enhance your PowerPoint presentation or course with engaging, interactive quizzes. Besides the ability to create a winning course, you can also enrich it with video narrations. The iSpring generated Flash movies provide ActionScript API, allowing you to have total programmatic control over the navigation and playback of your presentation.

Contact Virtuosity for the demo setup

Source: MaterNewMedia

Reduce PowerPoint File Size - Working!

2009-12-11T02:03:00.000-08:00

As a elearning professional we may have to work with lot of PowerPoint files for Presentations, Internal discussions, Content creation etc. I am sure everyone will admit with me that the proportionate file size increase make us think before we add further slides to the Presentation.

There are quite a few reasons why the files might get huge. We're going to look at why it happens, how you can fix it, and what you can do to prevent it from happening again.

Turn off fast Save Option

First off, you'll need to do a little setup in PowerPoint. On the Tools menu, click Options, click the Save tab, and then clear the Allow fast saves check box. Doing this forces PowerPoint to remove excess data from your presentation file each time you save.

After you've turned off fast saves, save your presentation again under a new name. On the File menu, click Save As, type a name for the new version of your presentation in the File namebox, and then click OK.

In fact, it's a good idea to save another copy of your presentation before continuing. Some of the following steps make irreversible changes to your presentation. You'll want a backup copy of your slide show.

Watch out for oversize image files

In most cases, images don't need to be much larger than 1024 × 768 pixels. If your images are larger than this, your PowerPoint files are probably bigger than they need to be.

PowerPoint 2002 and later can compress images and remove unneeded data:
1. Right-click the picture, and then click Format Picture on the shortcut menu.
2. In the Format dialog box, click the Picture tab, and then click Compress.
3. Under Apply to, do one of the following:
To compress just the current picture, click Selected pictures.
To compress all the pictures in your presentation, click All pictures in document.
4. Under Change resolution, do one of the following:
If your presentation will be used for a screen show, click Web/Screen.
If you plan to distribute your presentation as printed pages, click Print.
5. Under Options, select the Compress pictures check box and the Delete cropped areas of

pictures check box.
6. Click OK.
7. If prompted, click Apply in the Compress Pictures dialog box.

PowerPoint compresses the picture or pictures for you automatically.

If you use PowerPoint 2000 or earlier, do the following for each image that you want to compress:
1. Click the picture to select it.
2. On the Edit menu, click Copy.
3. Again on the Edit menu, click Paste Special.
4. Do one of the following:
For most images, such as photos and scans, click JPG.
For images with large areas of flat color, or that contain important text or fine details, click

PNG. Note JPG files are usually smaller, but JPG's "lossy" compression can blur thin lines and

other fine detail, or leave "artifacts" (stray odd-colored pixels) around text.

5. Delete the original image.

Watch for embedded objects, pasted or dragged graphics

If possible, bring images into PowerPoint by doing the following: On the Insert menu, point to Picture, and then click From File.

When you copy and paste (or drag) an image or a graphic that includes an image from another program into PowerPoint, PowerPoint may create an embedded OLE object. The OLE object includes a Windows® Metafile (WMF) picture of the image. PowerPoint normally compresses images very efficiently, but it can't compress images in WMFs, so copying and pasting or dragging images into your files can make your files quite large.

Embedded objects are easy to shrink. After you no longer need to edit the image (by double-clicking it), do the following: Right-click the image, point to Grouping on the shortcut menu, and then click Ungroup. Next, immediately right-click the image again, point to Grouping on the shortcut menu, and then click Regroup. Ungrouping throws away the OLE data and leaves just the picture — in a form that PowerPoint can now compress.

Incidentally, it's okay to copy and paste images from one slide to another within PowerPoint. PowerPoint stores only one copy of the image no matter how many times you use it, so reusing an image can actually help keep your file sizes down.

Check the master slides, too!

When you check your presentation for oversize images and embedded OLE objects, don't forget to check the slide, title, notes, and handout masters as well as the individual slides.

Also check each notes page in Notes Page view (graphics on the notes pages don't appear in the Notes pane in Normal view in PowerPoint 2000 and later).

Uniting for a Good Cause - Global Warming

2009-12-07T02:31:00.001-08:00

Today 56 newspapers in 45 countries take the unprecedented step of speaking with one voice through a common editorial. We do so because humanity faces a profound emergency. Unless we combine to take decisive action, climate change will ravage our planet, and with it our prosperity and security. The dangers have been becoming apparent for a generation. Now the facts have started to speak: 11 of the past 14 years have been the warmest on record, the Arctic ice-cap is melting, and last year’s inflamed oil and food prices provide a foretaste of future havoc. In scientific journals the question is no longer whether humans are to blame, but how little time we have got left to limit the damage. Yet so far the world’s response has been feeble and half-hearted.

Climate change has been caused over centuries, has consequences that will endure for all time, and our prospects of taming it will be determined in the next 14 days. We call on the representatives of the 192 countries gathered in Copenhagen not to hesitate, not to fall into dispute, not to blame each other but to seize opportunity from the greatest modern failure of politics. This should not be a fight between the rich world and the poor world, or between east and west. Climate change affects everyone, and must be solved by everyone. The science is complex but the facts are clear. The world needs to take steps to limit temperature rises to 2C, an aim that will require global emissions to peak and begin falling within the next 5-10 years. A bigger rise of 3-4C — the smallest increase we can prudently expect to follow inaction — would parch continents, turning farmland into desert. Half of all species could become extinct, untold millions of people would be displaced, whole nations drowned by the sea.

At the deal’s heart must be a settlement between the rich world and the developing world covering how the burden of fighting climate change will be divided — and how we will share a newly precious resource: the trillion or so tonnes of carbon that we can emit before the mercury rises to dangerous levels. Rich nations like to point to the arithmetic truth that there can be no solution until developing giants such as China take more radical steps than they have so far. But the rich world is responsible for most of the accumulated carbon in the atmosphere — three-quarters of all carbon dioxide emitted since 1850. It must now take a lead, and every developed country must commit to deep cuts which will reduce its emissions within a decade to very substantially less than its 1990 level. Developing countries can point out they did not cause the bulk of the problem, and also that the poorest regions of the world will be hardest hit. But they will increasingly contribute to warming, and must thus pledge meaningful and quantifiable action of their own. Though both fell short of what some had hoped for, the recent commitments to emissions targets by the world’s biggest polluters, the United States and China, were important steps in the right direction.

Social justice demands that the industrialised world digs deep into its pockets and pledges cash to help poorer countries adapt to climate change, and clean technologies to enable them to grow economically without growing their emissions. The architecture of a future treaty must also be pinned down – with rigorous multilateral monitoring, fair rewards for protecting forests, and the credible assessment of “exported emissions” so that the burden can eventually be more equitably shared between those who produce polluting products and those who consume them. And fairness requires that the burden placed on individual developed countries should take into account their ability to bear it; for instance newer EU members, often much poorer than “old Europe,” must not suffer more than their richer partners.

The transformation will be costly, but many times less than the bill for bailing out global finance — and far less costly than the consequences of doing nothing. Many of us, particularly in the developed world, will have to change our lifestyles. The era of flights that cost less than the taxi ride to the airport is drawing to a close. We will have to shop, eat, and travel more intelligently. We will have to pay more for our energy, and use less of it. But the shift to a low-carbon society holds out the prospect of more opportunity than sacrifice. Already some countries have recognised that embracing the transformation can bring growth, jobs, and better quality lives. The flow of capital tells its own story: last year for the first time more was invested in renewable forms of energy than producing electricity from fossil fuels. Kicking our carbon habit within a few short decades will require a feat of engineering and innovation to match anything in our history. But whereas putting a man on the moon or splitting the atom were born of conflict and competition, the coming carbon race must be driven by a collaborative effort to achieve collective salvation.
Overcoming climate change will take a triumph of optimism over pessimism, of vision over shortsightedness, of what Abraham Lincoln called “the better angels of our nature.” It is in that spirit that 56 newspapers from around the world have united behind this editorial. If we, with such different national and political perspectives, can agree on what must be done then surely our leaders can too. The politicians in Copenhagen have the power to shape history’s judgment on this generation: one that saw a challenge and rose to it, or one so stupid that saw calamity coming but did nothing to avert it. We implore them to make the right choice.
Reference: The Hindu

Did you Know?

Did you realise how eLearning/Technology based education/ICT is environmentally friendly learning mode really is as compared to the traditional academic setting of a classroom. Think about it for a minute. How many books and papers do you suppose is wasted in every classroom education year? Tons. But one can eliminate most of the need for such waste. Even chalk is something consumed but with this innovative learning delivery nothing is expended apart from electricity which is expended anyway in any classroom with the harsh lights and room air-conditioning system. We are after all in a time of environmental crisis, in the brink of dangerous global warming. A lot of teachers know the importance of environmentalism and would love to take steps to reduce any of the emissions and pollution created from the production of paper and other classroom materials that the computer will make obsolete.

Now, Gmail, Facebook accessible on cable TV

2009-11-27T00:04:00.000-08:00

New Delhi: There's good news for those who use cable television services. You can now check your mail, watch YouTube videos or connect with friends on Facebook at the regular cable subscription charge of Rs. 150-200 per month.Logic Eastern, a Noida-based manufacturer of cable infrastructure, has developed special set-top boxes which come with an in-built patented hardware that enables connection to Gmail, Facebook and YouTube. The company has made possible two-way flow of data - from websites to cable operators to consumers and return by using the existing cellphone technology.

The company has installed large servers which download Gmail, YouTube and Facebook pages on behalf of its subscribers and pushes them on to their television screens. For now, consumers can access this service with a special remote control. However the company is developing a wi-fi keyboard that will be given along with the set-top boxes. Also, apart from the remote control, consumers can use their mobile phones to surf channels or access these websites.Logic Eastern has already deployed 60,000 such set-top boxes across South Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Nagpur, Bhubaneswar and Jammu. The company has roped in ICICI as an investor. It has bought a 20 percent stake, which is helping Logic Eastern monetise these services that even existing Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) companies and the Direct-to-Home (DTH) operators have not been able to achieve."We believe it will be critical for cable operators to differentiate their services by leveraging the massive bandwidth that their cables take to each home. This is something that even DTH cannot do," says Vineet Wadhwa, Chief Technology Officer and Promoter of Logic Eastern. Instead of value-added services, the company prefers to call them 'enhanced services.' But how safe is accessing your email via cable? It is as safe as logging on to the internet on your home computer or laptop, says Wadhwa.

Source: siliconindia news bureau

Free Online Collaboration Tool

2009-11-16T20:14:00.000-08:00

Freebee’s are quite useful now a days, especially in education sector. Recently I have been searching for a quick collaboration tool to talk about a document with whiteboard tool facility and found http://www.showdocument.com/ interesting. There are many cool features available in this online tool, it allowed me to work on it without any registration. However once I registered with showdocument.com I received account that serves as my online storage for the documents. It allowed me to launch web meeting with my files from anywhere.

Some of the features that might interest you

Share documents online
A file sharing and online document review service that allows users to work together with any document including PDF, Word, Power Point, jpg files. Elearning, online training and work meetings use this service.

Share document from URL
A rapid share file from a URL. Insert a document URL within the Web Meeting application once you entered the live meeting. Begin session by clicking on Interactive Whiteboard and open a new tab and select Document from URL.

Interactive Whiteboard
The interactive whiteboard allow users to work together. They can write and draw images on the whiteboard during the web meeting.

Shared Text Editor
An advanced online text editor allow users to work together during the web meeting on text files and save the files on their workstation afterword.

Share You Tube
Share YouTube video clips with others during your net meeting, elearning session or online training. You control what they see, seek, pause and draw on the video. Begin the Net Meeting by clicking on Interactive Whiteboard and open a new tab and select Share You Tube video.

I have used skype for the VoIP and it really worked well. But some of the typical virtual classroom features that are missed here are Archiving, VoIP, Real time video conferencing, Application sharing etc. This is good for internal team member collaboration with documents and whiteboard calculations.

Empower IT - TrITchy 2009

2009-11-13T22:20:00.000-08:00

TIRUCHI: The Electronics Corporation of Tamil Nadu (ELCOT) expects a massive turnout of about 10,000 under graduates and post-graduates from arts and science, and engineering colleges from Tiruchi and seven surrounding districts for the ‘Empower IT’ programme it has decided to host here on November 28 in association with NASSCOM (National Association of Software & Service Companies).

The day-long event has been conceptualised to project Tiruchi as an IT destination, while orienting the students to the current requirements and expectations of IT and ITES sector. The event conducted at Tirunelveli last year attracted 14,000 and 12,000 students on the first and second day.

Fifty companies, including most of the IT majors, have been roped in for the Tiruchi event. According to ELCOT Managing Director Santhosh Babu, Empower IT will take Tiruchi that already ranks high among tier-II cities by attracting nine companies to its IT Park owing to factors like cost advantage and presence of quality educational institutions to the next level.

At a preparatory meeting with college principals, representatives of universities, industrialists, and members of Rotary and Lions Clubs, he said about 30 speakers would be invited from Chennai to address the students. The event that would be organised by the NASSCOM in corporate style.

The ELCOT MD sought the fullest cooperation of the colleges and universities to publicise the event to the students. He wanted the printouts of the details of the event and the competitions to be put up on the notice boards, and urged the institution heads to evolve a collective vision and ideate such that Tiruchi could be projected as the next IT destination of Tamil Nadu.

The Regional Director of NASSCOM K. Purushothaman said all particulars of Empower IT can be accessed at Elcot’s website: http://www.elcot.in/, from November 5. He identified aspiring arts and science colleges, engineering colleges, and universities, and the National Institute of Technology – Tiruchi to function as nodal institutions to conduct 10 competitions, including paper presentation, coding, group discussion, debugging, quiz, elocution and essay writing. Each event will be coordinated by an IT company, Mr. Purushothaman said.

Inviting suggestions from the gathering, Mr. Santhosh Babu called upon institutions to suggest competitions on topical software that would be of utility to the Government. Topics like green computing and mobile computing were suggested at the meeting.

The competitions would be conducted in arts and science colleges on November 21 and 22, and in engineering colleges on November 22 and 23, he said. The Director of NIT-T M. Chidambaram mooted the idea of institutions joining hands for conducting train the trainer programmes on what the IT industry expects from graduates of various disciplines and specialisations. The objective was to make all employable, he said.

Source: Hindu

National Education Day

2009-11-10T20:45:00.000-08:00

Educational institutions at all levels across the country will celebrate November 11 as the National Education Day, commemorating the birthday of Maulana Abdul Kalam Azad, an eminent educationist and the first Union Minister of Education of independent India.

The Ministry of Human Resource Development, had on September 11, 2008 announced, "November 11 every year, from 2008 will be celebrated as the National Education Day, without declaring it a holiday".

National Education Day - November 11

The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) has also asked all its affiliated schools to celebrate the day in a befitting manner by organizing various activities like seminars, symposia, essay writing, elocution competitions etc.

Source:http://www.indiaedunews.net/Today/National_Education_Day_to_be_celebrated_on_Nov_11_6500/

Education without Boundaries

2009-11-04T22:03:00.000-08:00

Team Virtuosity

Virtuosity Skill Development shares its élan vital with CII’s Skills Development Initiative of ‘Making India the Skill’s Capital of the World’. Virtuosity’s initiative to pioneer 21st Century education in Indian Academia through Technology-aided learning solutions; and its intrinsic capability to provide highly scalable, inclusive (regardless of geographical, socio-economic and/or personal backgrounds), global quality education- was appreciated at the Summit.

Mr. Shiva Prasath, Managing Director of Virtuosity in his keynote address titled “Education without Boundaries” highlighted the present and future challenges facing Higher Education in India and advocated the vitality and capability of e-learning, making the case for e-learning as the most viable solution to address those challenges.

Expressing concern over the daunting challenges faced by Higher Education which has faced decades of neglect, he pointed out that during the next decade there would be 17 million students needing access to Higher education and the challenge before India lies in increasing access and quality simultaneously. The statistics that he provided on India’s education scenario, with special reference to higher education was an eye-opener. He pointed out that India ranks only 81 in terms of % of GDP spending in education which amounts to 4.1%, of which higher education is allotted only 18%. He further revealed that the Graduate Employability Ratio (GER) of India stands at a meager 11.8% while it is around 25% in developed countries. On challenges on the Scalability front he said there is an estimated shortfall of 45% between seats required and available. On Inclusiveness he said over 170mn students are not receiving higher education today due to inadequate and uneven infrastructure across the country. On Quality he pointed out that only 25% of technical graduates and 10-15% of general graduates are found to be employable in a global workplace. Given these mounting challenges he said the adoption of e-learning as central to India’s education policy gives India the best chance to counter these and emerge as a knowledge superpower.

Echoing similar thoughts of making education in India scalable, qualitative and inclusive, K.N. Shenoy, Chairman of the CII Institute of Quality sought for an appropriate hand-holding for rural India, while Anand Sudarshan, CEO of Manipal pointed out that “demographic divide can become a demographic disaster unless scalability, inclusiveness and excellence are achieved.” Y.S. Rajan, Principal Advisor to CII made an appeal to “leverage technology in a major way to reach out to the masses” but felt connectivity and penetration of technology to be a big hitch. Urgency for skill development was also expressed by M.V. Subbiah, Chairman, National Skills Development Corporation. In the concluding address, N. Kumar Vice-chairman of Sanmar Group was hopeful that education summits will go a long way in bridging the gap between the academia and the industry.

The summit showcased technology and solutions for the education sector, which was brought forth by Virtuosity, Everonn, Educomp, Manipal Education, ebek and NIIT amongst others.

Source : Virtuosity Skill Development

Contact Virtuosity for more details

EVENT : Quality Education: Scalable with Inclusiveness

2009-10-26T00:41:00.001-07:00

Last week has been a heavy professional networking for me in Chennai trade centre as I participated in the NSQE (National summit on Quality Education) organized by CII.

The event concept is basically on how the current education system in India working and their challenges and what is going to be the approach going forward, end of the event it is good that the panel members stressed on brining technology solutions into education like e-learning technologies.

Concept paper of the NSQE Event.

Just like leaders in business and industry, educators across the nation are trying to meet the fast-changing needs and expectations of the student community. In order to develop capable, ‘thinking youth’ –the future force of the nation, the role of educators is now gaining immense credence. Improving access and Quality at all levels of education is now the priority area not only with the central and state Governments but also the onus now lies with private institutions as well.

Gandhiji once said ‘True education must correspond to the surrounding circumstances or it is not a healthy growth’.

While government has chalked out plans to scale up education programmes across the nation with many initiatives like SSA, RMSA, National Knowledge Commission, the introduction of Right to Education Bill etc, a few of the private institutions also are actively pitching in to reach out to those who are away from the mainstream. This has coerced CII Institute of Quality (CII-IQ) to look at bringing about a new perspective to enhance the Quality of education across the nation since the last decade. It is time that Education sector moves into the expansion mode and is equally scaled up to be more inclusive so as to reach out to a larger chunk of the Indian population and achieve at least functional literacy in the next few years.

Challenges

Few questions which always has been haunting the stakeholders of education mainly relates to:

Providing Education for all
While providing access retaining Quality
Can assessments, certifications and accreditations assure delivery of Quality education in Institutions
What are some of the models/innovations already tried across the nation and are being tried
Can technology help scale up Quality education across nation
What are scalable models tried in other sectors and the learning’s that can be emulated.

Some of the reasons cited are the fact that immediately after New Economic Policy (NEP) reforms were introduced, the government allowed massive capacity creation with bare minimum Quality standards put in place. The capacity creation in the last 15 years has been phenomenal and quite unprecedented growth giving rise to a number of thorny issues. This important aspect should form the focus as to how excellence in primary/higher education sectors should become a mission in order to salvage the education sector and to also re-invent it holistically so that top-end human resource capital keeps pace with the high growth that India is currently positioned at. Another reason is India’s education sector suffers from a yawning gap in funds as also due to archaic regulatory mechanisms, poor Quality and low efficiency across all disciplines.

Education Policy also has been the biggest stumbling block to excellence in higher education. It is based on the Constitutional provision that education should be a charitable activity. While the government and philanthropic individuals take up the cause of education with deep pockets as a non-profit activity, the question whether education sector be opened to entrepreneurs as an ‘economic activity’ be liberalised, should also be pondered up to bring about a paradigm shift in this mission critical sector. Liberation of the sector to attract private domestic and overseas investments on a large scale is the key to access, affordability and equity. Worldwide experience indicates that capacity creation and Quality, happening in tandem, will serve the interest of the nation much better and moving in unilateral direction. Says C K Prahalad: “If India@75 fails to become a global leader the only reason for that failure will be Indians themselves. Nobody from outside is stopping us from succeeding. So this transformation is not about resources. It is about our confidence in building a new India. If we cannot imagine this India we cannot create it. Imagination and belief in India’s true destiny is what we need. We need the passion, the courage and certainly an enormous dose of humanity and humility.” Precisely to address these very issues HRD Ministry has proposed several Legislative, Policy and Administrative

The two day seminar started with Quality Education : Scalable with Inclusiveness : Perspectives and for higher education Mr. Anand Sudarshan, MD & CEO of Manipal Education provided an insight of Indian higher education system. Assuring Quality through Assessments Accreditations & Certifications by Prof H.A. Ranganath director of National Assessment & Accreditation Council

Integrating Technology for reaching people covered by Mr. Shiva Prasath. P, Managing Director of Virtuosity Skill Development - Virtuosity is pioneering Technology-aided Learning Solutions in the Indian Academia, ushering in a new era of globally contemporary, boundary less, anytime anywhere learning opportunities for learners across the country. It is Virtuosity’s credo that the answer to India’s educational challenges and the growing requirements of skilled workforce for India’s knowledge economy, lies in laying the foundation for the emergence of technology-aided learning, taking higher education beyond classrooms, while also enhancing learning experiences within them. Virtuosity is committed to instilling educational excellence at all levels, and thereby develop a skilled community by partnering with academia, industry, government, and other educational organizations. Virtuosity’s Technology-aided learning solutions achieve Increased Affordability, Accessibility and Quality of Education, in essence: Education without boundaries.

Other topics were also presented like Innovations in Education by Mr. S Senthil Ganesh, Secretary of RVS Group of Institution and Ms. Krista Knopper, Strategic Advisor India from Maastricht University India Institute.

Event Panel Members

Prof. Y S Rajan
Principal Advisor
Confederation of Indian Industry

Mr. K Ganesan IAS *
Secretary – Higher Education
Government of Tamilnadu

Mr. Rajesh Lakhoni
Commissioner
Chennai City Corporation

Fr. Albert Muthumalai
Principal
Loyola College

PS: There were other speakers in some topics as mentioned above and I will try to post the event conclusion and some interesting stalls in the event in my next post.

SkillSoft Launches All-New Indian English Course Content

2009-10-09T21:42:00.000-07:00

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SkillSoft, a leading provider of e-learning and performance support solutions, is launching an all-new suite of Indian English online specialised content courses for Indian businesses who have both a local and global customer base. The new suite reflects SkillSoft’s commitment to deliver a premium level of culturally-conscious and user-friendly course content.

Rolling out the 30-strong courses over the next 3 months, the innovative Indian English content courses have been handpicked by SkillSoft in response to feedback from Indian businesses who wanted more choice in their e-learning repertoire.

The courses span a wide cross section from SkillSoft’s e-learning courseware, ranging from customer service to leadership to project management – the most preferred and relevant business areas that will benefit local Indian industries such as government and local banks. Courses include ‘Integrated Initiation and Planning’, ‘Making Decisions Dynamically’ and ‘The Fundamentals of Exceptional Customer Service’. The Indian English courses are built upon the same sound instructional design approach that SkillSoft has been using to develop online courseware for 19 years.

Check out the free demo courses
Virtuosity Skill Development

MBA in Media and Entertainment

2009-09-22T02:08:00.000-07:00

Students choose to enhance their education for many reasons, though until a few years ago, online degree weren't an option for a lot of people. Whether you are a high school graduate, want to accelerate or change your career, or have job or family commitments, a degree from an accredited university is a convenient way to achieve the goals and completely online.

Avagmah - Academic arm of 24x7 Learning just conceptualized the above requirements and analysed that the media industry is going to grow at a greater pace and there will be definite skilled manpower shortage by next year. So recently Avagmah partnered with Annamalai university and offering an online degree on MBA in Media and entertainment to manage the manpower gap and to build the pool of talent in media industry. Whatever your future plans, Avagmah can help you find top online degree programs that fit your needs.

There is a strong connection between management and entertainment and the management students have to deduce just what will open the doors of opportunity for them. Technology has become an inseparable part of the Media And Entertainment industry. Some examples of the latest technology involved are digital media technology, interactive TV, new and e-distribution channels. Therefore, technology management is also a major issue for the entertainment companies.

There is a wide scope for MBAs in Information Technology. These large companies also need managers to handle their support activities like finance and HR department. There are various jobs directly concerned with Media And Entertainment industry and require an MBA in Marketing. A few jobs for MBAs in this industry are:

Event Management- to organise and promote events such as award functions, live shows, etc.
Production Management- to help in the production of films, serials, news and entertainment channels.
Ideation- to develop ideas for stories for television serials, informative programmes, or documentary and other films.
Celebrity Management - to manage careers of celebrities. Brand Management - to maintain and promote brand names through various methods.

This MBA in Media course is endorsed with big players in the media industry, some of them are below.

MBA in Media and Entertainment degree is open to all UG candidates who would like to secure their future in media industry where the real fun loving working culture exists and thats the right place for innovators and creators too. For more details about the program, Click Here.

Education Loan facility available for students under standard terms and conditions is available through a special tie-up with HDFC Bank.

For more details, please call 1-800-1020-247, 1-800-4250-247 (Toll Free) or 080-40699100 or send email to contactus@avagmah.com

Proprietary LMS Vs Open Source LMS

2009-09-16T00:31:00.000-07:00

Did you think why many corporate and academics establish partnership with reliable elearning companies to implement elearning technologies like learning management systems rather than trying out open source softwares?

Here are the afterthoughts we collected from organizations who tried both open source and Proprietary LMS.

Licensing: In the case of an open source LMS there can be problems with regard to the licensing and copyright issues. As the LMS is a contribution of several thousands of people, there may be legal issues in case a solution or piece of work is not original or is from a patented source.

Quality: Open source LMS are typically developed by freelance developers or hobbyists. In addition the development is a combined effort of a number of such developers. There is tremendous variation in the expertise of such developers. This may result in the quality of the LMS taking a hit.

Technical Support & Implementation: Open source systems are typically hard to configure and deploy. They require specialized skills to do so which can be an expensive affair. Also no technical support exists at the time of deployment and post deployment. The users of such LMS can be left stranded in case they face any technical or functional hurdles. Usually the cost of implementation of the open source is quite higher.

Security: Open source systems typically expose the source code that can be a serious security concern. In case of unauthorized access or an accidental modification to the code, the potential problems in terms of compromising the security of the entire network or causing a malfunction in the LMS is large.

Customization: It is a known fact that any software cannot cater to the individual needs of a client. As such a certain amount of customization to tailor to the business needs of the client is always required. Also, there are instances wherein the LMS needs to be integrated with the client’s existing systems such as the HR system, ADSI etc. In case of an open source LMS, there is no scope for customization. The business needs of the client need to be tailored to match the features of the LMS and not vice versa which should really be the case.

Scalability: Open source system has to reside on the same server, so implementing open source LMS on distributed architecture where the application need to be implemented on multiple servers is a huge problem.

Robustness: Open source LMS cannot be scaled to support a large number of users rather they would not tested the robustness by joining concurrently. Such a kind of robustness may not be offered by open source systems.

Managing and administrating an open source LMS is also a huge hurdle, the elearning officer should be a technical savvy to manage it as a whole, so looking at these points many corporates still like to partner with elearning specialist than R&D with open source.

Learning Management System from 24x7 Learning - LearnTrak v10.3

2009-09-09T01:46:00.000-07:00

In my last article I have briefed about an initiative called "IIP" - Intellectual Infrastructure Partnership program from 24x7 learning extended to large academics and corporate. Post to that I have received tremendous feedback from the readers to post an article about the technology services from 24x7 Learning, I have already covered about 24x7 InterAct - World class collaboration tool from 24x7 Learning and I thought of writing about the Learning Management System - 24x7 LearnTrak, which is the backbone of the 24x7 technology.

According to WIKIPEDIA - A learning management system (LMS) is software for delivering, tracking and managing training/education. LMS range from systems for managing training/educational records to software for distributing courses over the Internet and offering features for online collaboration.

But, according to 24x7 Learning it is more than about delivering and tracking of courses, the TIC (Technology Innovation Center) team spend lot of time in conceptual design stage and analyze the training process of various academics and corporate to see how best they can support with their LMS. Having done more than 250 installation of virtual campuses for top IT and ITES and academic giants, they are now using their experience and collected feedbacks from their customers and developed such a state-of-the-art Learning Management System - LearnTrak V10.3.

LearnTrak is an AICC and SCORM Compliant, fully customizable and scalable Learning Management System (LMS) that will help create a culture of learning that extends across your enterprise. LearnTrak is built on an n-tier Architecture model, which makes it completely database independent, scalable and stable and its known for customization flexible with enough buffer in business layer to accomodate customers request.

Main Features of LearnTrak V10.3

Web-based solution that enables the delivery of training to individuals across various geographies.
Simple and Flexible user interface for Learner or Students, Faculty or Trainers and Administrators.
AICC and SCORM compliant and QTI Compliant for assessment.
Integration of courses and creation of tests in a few simple steps.
Integrated with virtual classroom module to support online training and virtual meetings with whiteboard, video conferencing with archiving facility.
Flexibility in creating different types of tests/assessments.
Assessment engine supports a variety of question types.
Digital Library for Learners and Students to share variety of eMaterials.
Polls and Surveys to collect important and instant information from a group of people.
Automated reports and intelligent Reminders (Integrated with SMS reminders and alerts).
Integrated eLearning and Classroom Training Management.
Competency Management to completely automate the delivery of training plan.

Various Modules of LearnTrak v10.3

What is 24x7 Learning's LearnTrak for Barclays, Aditya Birla Group and Dell???

LearnTrak v10.3 is now the backbone of many corporate and enterprise which facilitate training in an effective and efficient way.

EDGE, Barclays Bank’s Virtual Academy is created using the 24x7 LearnTrak framework, and is supported by domain specific content, custom-developed for them. EDGE presently has 2657 active users. Encouraged by the positive response to the Virtual Academy, Barclays GRCB India is looking at enhancing the course offerings and extending the Virtual Academy across its network of other offices.

Aditya Birla Group’s Gyanodaya Virtual Academy is powered by 24x7 LearnTrak. Considering the mammoth geographic spread of this conglomerate, 24x7 LearnTrak was deployed using a distributed architecture model. The usage patterns are pleasantly startling! As on May 2007, close to 7000 employees had taken up at least one course, with a completion ratio of 90.70%. Today, their total number of active users has crossed 19000. PCQuest adjudged this among the best IT implementations of 2007.

Dell’s Leadership Academy-DEAL has 24x7 LearnTrak as the backbone. DEAL’s learners are spread across the Indian geography, and till date more than 1200 leaders have benefited from this program. Dell boasts of an 84% completion ratio, and this initiative has served the primary objective of Dell: increase the reach of their learning program.

24x7 Learning has bagged the Best IT Implementation of the Year 2009, 2008 and 2007, yes three consecutive years! This award and honor is instituted by the PC quest magazine. This award is for the Virtual Academy implementation for Microland, ESSAR and ABG respectively.

You shall get more information about LearnTrak from the ebrochure or register for an evaluation access to get a feel of the system of your own.

Need to know more about 24x7 Learning, write to them here

India's Largest Intellectual Infrastructure Partner - 24x7 Learning

2009-09-02T23:41:00.000-07:00

The bright side of recession : We always witness about evolution of new concepts and rebranding strategies during the period of recession, Smart companies always have their vision in mind but never fail to change their strategies when situation demands - we simply relate those people with "When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Get Going!"

Recently, India's leading elearning company 24x7 Learning rebranded themselves as an "Intellectual Infrastructure Partner" for large academics and corporate.

What is intellectual infrastructure?

Intellectual infrastructure refers to the human capital--the knowledge, skills, and abilities--required for both civic involvement and development. In order to prosper in the information age, communities need tech savvy business and community leaders, a skilled workforce, and IT support services. 24x7 Learning partners with corporate and academics and provide Technology, Content and Faculty to strengthening the process and ensuring quality knowledge impart.

24x7 Learning partners with educational institutions to provide the intellectual infrastructure that is required to create enhance and maintain our intellectual capital base. 24x7 Learning helps educational institutions provide the right combination of academic education (certification, degree, post-degree), vocational skills and non vocational skills enhancement programs. Educational institutions benefit with higher placement ratios, enhanced corporate visibility, launching new industry relevant programs and increasing its student base. 24x7 Learning also helps corporates maintain and enhance its employee skill base.

24x7 Learning has been in the business of providing Intellectual Infrastructure solutions to academic Institutions and Corporates like Dell, Infosys, Wipro, Aditya Birla Group, Essar, GMR and over a hundred other Corporates. They have been instrumental in training over 1 million users across 25 countries since 2001.

Some of the technology tools and content used in Intellectual Infrastructure Partership model are:

Technology
24x7 LearnTrak - Learning Management System
24x7 InterAct - Virtual Classroom Solution
24x7 SkillTrak - Assessment Management System

Content
SkillBridge Vocational and Non Vocational Contents
SkillSoft for IT, Softskill and Behavioural Contents
Harvard for Management Contents
Avagmah for Management and BTECH Contents
Articulate and Metamorphosis to develop instant in-house contents

If you are interested to know more about the intellectual Infrastructure Partnership from 24x7 Learning, contact the head of initiative Mr.Manohar @ manohar.kashyap@24x7learning.com or drop me a mail @ anand.rajendran@24x7learning.com

Here is the 24x7 Learning's Contact Page or SMS IIP to 56070 for a discussion.

The power of collaboration tool - 24x7 InterAct Review

2009-08-26T00:13:00.000-07:00

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We all are running all these days, looking for a simple but effective solution on what ever task we are handling. Especially in the training industry the change is immense. Every aspect of the training is automated and even Instructor Led Training programs also automated using collaboration tools. Collaboration tools not only popular in corporates but also a key application vastly used in education sector. Virtual class room tool from 24x7learning is going to be the hero of this Article.

24x7 InterAct is 24x7 Learning’s communication and collaboration software designed to enable innovative ways for individuals, coporates and academics to communicate via the internet. University can reach out to the geographically distributed students, link all their learning centres and encourage communication between students and faculty of the distance learning program. 24x7 InterAct’s Virtual Class room tool can be used to train geographically dispersed students, all at the same time. With 24x7 InterAct highest level of interactivity is available for a Virtual Class. 24x7 InterAct Virtual Classroom software application, helps achieve an immediate improvement in the content, effectiveness, and consistency of online training programs. It provides the lowest cost real-time collaboration solution. Just by eliminating travel, one can save enough time and money.

By implementing 24x7 InterAct communication and collaboration software, University and Corporate will be able to increase its reach and surpass the effectiveness of live training with 24x7 InterAct's collaborative capabilities. It also helps to deliver efficient and cost effective management and professional training, enabling their people to meet and collaborate on demand, wherever they may be.

24x7 InterAct includes integrated testing and assessment capabilities that allow for comprehensive in-session or post-session testing. The ideal platform for assessing student capabilities and verifying progress during class.

Various Featurs of 24x7 InterAct

Application, Desktop, and Region Sharing - Interact with any application or share the functionality of any participant’s entire desktop. With Region Sharing, select just a portion of the application or desktop for sharing.

Interactive Whiteboard - Utilize virtual whiteboard capabilities to make notes, draw simple graphics, import images, and grab screen captures of other applications during your session.

Chatting - Respond to real-time chat questions from students and allow students to communicate with each other using text or emoticons.

Viewable Class Lists - See which attendees are students and which are assistants. Keep an eye on who has questions, technical problems, or who has left the session.

Breakout Groups - Instructors can break the class into smaller breakout sessions, either by specific assignment or random configuration. Breakout groups can collaborate on assignments and then return to the main class to share results.

Glimpse Student Screens - Take an over-the-shoulder look at exactly what students are currently viewing.

Streaming Video - Simulate a live classroom environment by teaching via streaming video.
Synchronized Web Browsing - Walk students through any website. Anywhere you click they follow right along with you.

Electronic Hand Raising - Allow students to ask questions by virtually raising their hands. Respond to questions over the phone or through chat.

Audio Options - Take advantage of audio choices including traditional teleconference and Voice over IP (VoIP). With the Moderator Interface, instructors can control the teleconference through the computer.

Content Upload - Choose to upload course materials (e.g. PowerPoint, Web links, audio and video links) prior to class or, take advantage of the ability to upload content while in session.

Participation Meter - Monitor the engagement level of your students. You’ll know who’s idle and who’s staying active by the icon next to eachname in the Attendees list. Reports allow you to use this information for the purpose of gauging class participation.

Multi-point Video - Display multiple videos or pictures simultaneously and select which participants you wish to view.

Polling, Surveys, and Q&A - Gather feedback from participants by launching polls or Q&A windows that you preload or create on-the-fly.

24x7 InterAct software includes the Communications Center – an easy-to-use management console. Set up classes, track CO2 savings with the Green Meter, and leverage administrative controls to customize session setup, including registrationand security options.

Look at a sample session from Thapar University : Click Here

To fix an online demo and to know more details about this software, please contact 24x7 learning

Create Screencasts for Twitter or Articulate

2009-08-19T04:30:00.000-07:00

Articulate just launched a great new product called Screenr, which allows you to record screen casts directly within your web browser.

With Screenr, you can create publicly sharable high-definition screencasts of up to 5 minutes in duration. There’s nothing to download and it’s completely free. All you need is a web browser and Java, which most browsers already have installed.

Some highlights of what you can do with Screenr:

Record from a Mac or a PC
Preview your screencast before publishing
Share via Twitter
Retweet your favorite screencasts
Publish directly to YouTube
Share the link via email
Output to MP4, then import into your Articulate projects
Embed in your website or blog
Play videos in full-screen mode
Playback via your iPhone

Swine Flu Awareness Course from 24x7learning

2009-08-10T22:50:00.000-07:00

The Swine Flu outbreak in the UK is reaching exponential growth figures according the BBC and much is being made of contingency plans for schools to keep functioning if they must keep their doors closed in the Autumn. Heavy populated countries like India is very vulnerable to this contiguous disease and this is very evident with Pune case.

Any solution is sure to involve putting more teaching online and doing things remotely. If this “worst case scenario” were to come true then we would probably see universities following suit.

But what of businesses?

Inside the companies that we’ve been visiting this week, Swine Flu is high on the agenda. One business we attended asked all employees and visitors to wash their hands before passing through the reception area. Another held a seminar for Senior Managers, advising that it was likely as much as 10% of their workforce could be on sick leave at any one time in the coming months. And so questions must be raised as to business continuity plans if this flu outbreak were to escalate further and drag out over the winter months. One thing should be certain; bringing large groups of workers together in a single room for an extended period of time, as occurs with face-to-face training, is a big no-no.

They say necessity is the mother of invention. Could this be E-learning’s time to shine? The business case for utilising more remote technology is certainly strengthened by outbreaks like Swine Flu, maybe it’s time to start telling people their options…

Here is a elearning module to create awareness about this swine flu, this eLearning module is intended for individuals, government institutions, schools, hospitals, associations and companies worldwide who want to learn more about what’s happening and what they can do about it. Because this is so important, we are offering this eClass at no charge whatsoever. We feel this is the best way we can help ensure this virus does not spread further within our global community. The module explains what the virus is, lists typical symptoms and more.

H1N1 Swine Flu eLearning Module

Please forward this blog to the nears & dears and create awareness about H1N1

Wanna share many website URLs???

2009-08-05T06:36:00.000-07:00

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Some times we may need to share a list of web site URLs to our customers, colleagues or even we may required to do so for advertising. Without much technical work or programming we would always like to group the several site address to one link to simplify the process and access.
A site called http://sqworl.com/ is there in the web to just help you to do so!

This site basically helps the techies or non-techies to condense a collection of URLs into one URL. Points off, however, for not mentioning the business model (advertising, obviously).

Sqworl lets you put together a collection of links and share those with one Sqworl link. You can also take notes below each Website thumbnail, which could come in handy when you are researching a purchase and want to keep all of your links in one place (see screenshot below), or simply want to share a collection with others. (Like the one I made of awesome elearning sites).

The actual process of adding links is very easy. You have option to copy and paste each URL into the site. A browser add-on that lets you bookmark pages as you browse would be better.
But I like the idea of collapsing an entire group of links into a single URL. Hope this help some of you too.

Try out Off-the-Shelf Contents from SkillSoft

2009-07-28T22:26:00.000-07:00

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Like most companies, you are looking for ways to cut costs and eliminate travel wherever possible. But you need to make sure that your staff is well-trained on key technologies and skill sets. Cutting training simply ISN’T an option, but you may be wondering how you’re going to pay for it.

Troubled times call for new approaches.

SkillSoft provides e-learning and performance support solutions for enterprises, government, education, and small to medium-sized businesses worldwide. 24x7learning partners with SkillSoft for more than 5 years now and serving India to create talent pool and empowering India by imparting knowledge.

Business Skills Courseware Collection comprising 2,200 courseware titles and simulations encompassing management/leadership, project management, sales and customer-facing skills, business strategy/operations, finance, and human resources; IT Skills and Certification Courseware Collection, which includes 2,450 courseware titles encompassing software development, operating systems and server technologies, Internet and network technologies, enterprise database systems, and Web design; Desktop Skills Courseware Collection consisting of approximately 800 courseware titles to assist professionals who rely upon desktop applications and also supports industry certification; and Legal Compliance, Federal Government Compliance, and Environmental Safety and Health Courseware Collection designed to address federal requirements that govern federal employees. It also provides online mentoring services, IT and business books to online subscribers, executive content services, and professional services.

SkillSoft offers cost effective solutions that help you ensure your staff has the most up-to-date knowledge on critical subjects, while significantly reducing the costs of classroom training. In fact, with SkillSoft’s technology-enabled learning approaches you can save as much as 68 PERCENT over traditional training methods.

Over 6,000 self-study e-learning courses Virtual instructor-led courses with world-class instructors Over 20,000 online books with Books24x7 collections Access to a team of mentors with over 1,000 certifications

One example of the savings you can expect:

For a Project Management Professional training session from a national in-person classroom provider, compared to SkillSoft’s offering, you can save an average of 40-60%. Compared with self-paced e-learning the savings are even more impressive. And in either case, there is no travel expense or out-of-office time! Your learners appreciate the convenience and quality, but your senior management will appreciate the cost savings even more.

Contact 24x7learning consultants to discuss how this off-the-shelf content suits your training needs .

Power of Video is the Power of Communication

2009-07-22T00:49:00.000-07:00

Just Sit and Listen, the Experience is Speaking!

The idea behind Fifty Lessons is a simple one. They set out to film the world’s most successful business people and obtain the most important lessons they have learnt in the course of their careers.

What they have captured is a wealth of compelling video stories that range across the spectrum of business life: from the fine art of commercial negotiation to the perilous waters of organizational change, to the fundamentals of customer service. Our growing library of over 500 lessons from over 100 high profile leaders will enhance the growth and development of your people across your organization.

One additional unforeseen benefit of our approach is that the stories have also proved to be powerful tools in supporting corporate wide communication and initiatives.

Learning Challenges

Fifty Lessons has set out to tackle the following Learning Challenges you face:

You require training materials that enhance individual and team development, improve behaviors and positively impact business performance.
You need rich distributed content that can be easily integrated into your people development programs at all level within your organization.
Your people live in a rich media World. They demand that their development materials are just as engaging.
Training is powerful when you provide content that your people can relate to. Your people desire lessons that are relevant to the business and management issues they face on a daily basis.
Time is limited and your people require learning objects that are focused and high impact.
You want to deliver lessons that people retain and implement.

The Fifty Lessons Solution

The World Class Leaders we have filmed provide a wide range of lessons that add tested wisdom, insight and real world examples. These lessons will benefit all aspects of your people development programs, especially management and leadership.
Fifty Lessons is designed so that it can be easily integrated into all aspects of your classroom and distributed learning programs. The Lessons can be delivered through our award winning platform, or integrated into your Learning management systems and courseware.
Fifty Lessons provides engaging content based on the Power of Storytelling, delivered as premium quality video. Filmed to broadcast standards, the lessons provide you with high value professional content.
These stories encapsulate practical lessons from real business leaders. The lessons offer a uniquely valuable and stimulating learning resource that your people can relate to. The lessons are delivered in the context of challenges and opportunities your people face every day.
The lessons are perfect for a time-constrained world. Most lessons are no longer than five minutes, focused on delivering key points in a manner that your people will process, retain and action.

Watch a sample video content on Maintaining Customer Service When You Scale, experience shared by Richard Santulli of NetJets

Contact 24x7learning representative to procure your individual license or corporate account :
http://24x7learning.com/contactus.asp

SkillBridge - Employability Enhancement Program

2009-07-14T01:01:00.000-07:00

If you need a BRIDGE for

Success,
Knowledge,
India empowerment,
Learning and
Luminous future.

Then try out.....

SkillBridge is helping unemployed people to get their dream job by employability enhancement program. A world class Employability Enhancement Program that helps you get through your job interviews like an experienced professional. SkillBridge not only help students to upgrade their skills that make them highly employable but also takes closer to world-class job opportunities.

Face interviews fearlessly now.
Walk out of your college with a job.
Be prepared be employable.

SkillBridge Employability Enhancement Programs strategically cater to the needs of fresh graduates and working professionals looking to fill the gaps in their skill levels.

SkillBridge identify skill gaps in students and prepares them for employment.

Features:

Learning is through a blended learning methodology that comprises of classroom training as well as eLearning.
Effective courseware which can be used as handy reference, post the program.
Activity based sessions, role-plays and discussions make it an interactive program.
Tests and assessments measure how much the student has learnt from each module.
Regular feedback from the tests is shared with the student thereby ensuring learning effectiveness.
Flexibility of the program allows students to comfortably enroll into the program while pursuing their degree.
Exclusive job portal with specially designed resume format for SkillBridge certified students only.
Job opportunities with our extensive client database from 24x7learning.
Transition from a student to an employable professional.
Growth Support Programs.

ENAHANCING SKILLS, CREATING GLOBAL WINNERS - A program from Premium Talent Life cycle management company http://24x7learning.com/

SkillBridge program is currently available to Colleges, Institution (become a franchise), Corporates and Governments.

Reach them at http://www.skillbridge.in/contactus.asp

Voice and Accent Language Virtual Lab for ITES

2009-07-07T06:57:00.001-07:00

Its now a product review time and this is much needed one for ITES especially voice based call centers and BPO's...

When your associates speak, do your customer listen to what they say or how they say it? If the answer is no, CAN8 is the solution to improve the language and accent. The Virtual lab comes with USA, UK and Australian accent training pack and let your speech reflect who you are. Let your associate speech communicate the intended message. If your mother tongue influencing or regional accent is interfering with how you express yourself, you can benefit from this services.

The CAN 8 VirtuaLab is a 100% digital language laboratory. It is a network based interactive, multimedia learning facility with the ability to teach and test languages;from Arabic to English to Chinese. With voice over the Internet (VOIP) since 1997, this comprehensive learning system is used for workplace training, written orspoken language testing and group conferencing. Specified completely by teachers' requests, CAN-8 smoothly integrates employeelearning activities with instructor activities of evaluation and lesson creation. Theinstructor can monitor, evaluate and provide feed back to employees whose workhas been automatically saved for this purpose. Employees and instructors canmaintain personal contact while working from any place at any time. As well,instructors can create or change lessons as the need arises. Again, from any place and at any time.

With CAN 8 VirtuaLab, oral production is the focus of emplyee activity, not an afterthought.

Employees use CAN-8 for listen, speak and compare activities as well as more taskoriented, communicative activities. They can record and playback with high speedand excellent quality sound. Direct access to digitally recorded sound allowsemployees to quickly find the precise spot in a word, sentence, dialogue or classmenu.A CAN-8 lab is a multi-purpose learning environment. Employees can follow classinstruction or "drop-in" and work on many different activities. CAN-8 can be apronunciation coach, a tool for practicing conversation, grammar andcomprehension skills or a testing site. It can also be used to develop skills forinterpretation or simultaneous translation professionals.

Interested in evaluating this software, please write your request to contactus@24x7learning.com or email me.

Online B.Tech Degree and PG Diploma in Management

2009-07-02T00:31:00.000-07:00

Many times we would have this question asked ourself... why this guy got promoted and why not me? what do we lack in?.

Is it Skills? No, we might be better than that promoted person...

It is qualification my dear friends, so it is very crucial how you are updating your skills and qualifications. I am already started updating myself in Management studies and getting prepared for my promotion :)

Since most of us are working professional finding out a good reputed university providing online degree is essential. Recently I came across about Avagmah and they are giving application for B.Tech program online.

Avagmah, provides a platform for working professionals to learn and grow by giving them an opportunity to acquire a government recognized programs in Management and Engineering, as against mere participation certificates. With the tremendous growth being witnessed by various industries in India, working professionals today have an unprecedented opportunity before them to acquire formal management & engineering skills and fast-track career.

Avagmah has aligned with premier management and technical institutions like IMT-CDL and Thapar University to bring working professionals the best of continuing education programs. IMT, as you may be aware, is a top-10 business school in India. Thapar University has been pioneer in the advancement of Technical Education in the country and is known for its high quality industry oriented Engineering programs.
Advanced Post Graduation in Management

Working professionals with a post graduation in management on an average experience a 30% hike in their salaries. While you are working, attend a 2 year Advanced post graduation program in Management part time.
Click here to know more about the program.
B. Tech (Computer Science, Civil, Mechanical & Electrical)

Besides the projected shortage of over 500,000 engineers in the IT segment by NASSCOM, there is an acute shortage of engineers in the other fast growth segments like Telecom, Automobiles, Aviation, Engineering, Manufacturing and Infrastructure. If you are an engineering Diploma professional with 2 years experience, you can earn your B. Tech degree in 3 years, while you are working.
Click here to know more about the program.

There is a famous saying... if you are not updated then you are outdated!!! - Its high time for us to get updated!!!

Happy eLearning!!!

Thinking of Word to eLearning conversion tool?

2009-06-29T07:14:00.000-07:00

I have been exploring for rapid conversion tools for a while and almost all the conversion tools requires PowerPoint as the base content for the conversion. This made me think a little and the question emerged....what will I have to do, if I have PDF or Word documents for elearning content creation?

Well the answer is "Metamorphosis" if you have Microsoft Word contents, you can immediately use Metamorphosis to convert your word document into a colourful interactive e-learning tutorial.

Metamorphosis involves a four step procedure:

1. Settings

2. Import

3. Edit

4. Publish.

The system defaults will deliver a polished, completed product every time. In other words, simply by importing your Word document you are able to generate a completed e-learning course with the click of a few buttons. Minimum System Requirements Metamorphosis may function correctly with lower specifications than those listed below (our testing criteria did not extend lower) but attempting to do so is neither recommended nor supported:

Microsoft Windows 2000, XP or higher
Microsoft Word 2000 or higher
Microsoft PowerPoint 2003 or higher
256MB RAM or higher
1024 x 768, 16-bit display
Internet Explorer 5.0 or higher

Internet connection (for initial activation only) Note if you do not intend to take advantage of Metamorphosis' automated handling of Word documents to generate your e-learning because, say, you want to manually create each screen then you do not need Word installed.

Most people who wish to train their staff begin with a content document. The instructional designer then chunks that information across screens and prescribes or searches for appropriate graphics to illustrate the content on each screen. It is this laborious process that Metamorphosis automates. The user simply provides the content document in Microsoft Word format and Metamorphosis does the rest. Metamorphosis draws on tens of thousands of high quality photographic and clip art images licensed from Hemera technology.

The system automatically generates learning activities and multiple choice questions are integrated into the system. A simple four step interface guides you through the lesson creation process. Once metamorphosis is finished the document conversion process, you can edit any of the resulting screens. The system has all the usual options of adding various media and different question types to further enhance the learning environment. The most exciting thing about Metamorphosis is that it has the potential to see the use of customised e-learning expand significantly from big business to small and medium sized enterprises with perhaps only a few employees. It really is possible to create high quality and attractive training programs in a matter of minutes. As Apixel's sales and marketing director effuses 'give Metamorphosis your Microsoft Word caterpillar and an e-learning butterfly will emerge almost instantly'.

More over it is not a conventional elearning conversion tools like others - It is a fully automated eLearning system.

So what are you waiting for? - download a free copy and test yourself and see if this can be used for your requirements

Direct Download Link: http://24x7learning.com/metamorphosis/downloads.asp

NOTE : If you have the base content in PDF format then use the conversion tool from PDF to Word such as HELLO PDF - http://www.hellopdf.com/download.php

Articulate Studio 09 - King of Rapid eLearning

2009-06-25T00:26:00.000-07:00

I recently came through a wonderful review article about Articulate Studio 09 - the latest edition from Articulate. There is no doubt that Articulate is the king of "Rapid eLearning" technology.

I know a guy who’s been a one-person e-learning department for the last eight years and was up against a four-hour timeline to put together an online training demo. Having seen a 2006 review of Articulate Presenter on the Training Media Review website, he decided to use Articulate Studio ‘09 to beat the clock and impress those university administrators who didn’t know it could be done in-house. That resource is me and—after reading the vice chancellor of finance’s glowing email to my dean—all I can say is: Just in time for Christmas!

How many of us one-person online learning departments understand the need for reliable, rapid development software? That is integrated with a familiar tool like PowerPoint? That is useful to beginners and to advanced developers? That is capable of creating advanced learning objects by inputting text? And, of course, does not break!I kept expecting Articulate’s integration of software applications to break—to not do what it was supposed to do—and I was happily disappointed. It was as if the software was staring me in the face and asking, “What would you like me to do next?”

THE PRODUCT

Articulate Studio comes bundled with these applications:• Presenter• Quizmaker• Engage• Video Encoder Presenter and Engage are the most tightly integrated with PowerPoint 2007—and, yes, unlike Adobe Captivate CS3 these applications actually work with PowerPoint 2007. They are the template and learning object developmentcomponents of Studio. Quizmaker provides the tools to build virtually any type of online learning assessment. It integrates withPowerPoint as well. Video Encoder proved to be a solid digital video-to-Flash conversion tool with a bare-bonesfeature set. Installation of all four applications was seamless and easy.

INTERFACE

If it’s not obvious by now, you will need to be somewhat proficient in PowerPoint to take full advantage of ArticulateStudio’s rich feature set. In fact, expect to do much of your work in Articulate through the Microsoft PowerPointinterface. Articulate shows up as an additional tab on the PowerPoint ribbon.Click the tab in PowerPoint, and you have access to all of the features of Engage, Quizmaker, and Presenter. But also be prepared for Engage and Quizmaker to open separate user interfaces from PowerPoint. This takes about four hours to get used to. If you’re not prepared, it can seem a little disconcerting at first.

EASE OF USE

My first project with Articulate Presenter consisted of downloading a random PowerPoint presentation I found on theInternet and then converting it to web-ready form using Presenter. Would there be any problems with the use of arandom presentation whose origins could have been PowerPoint 2003 or earlier? No, there wasn’t. Presenter handled this task and delivered a packaged, web-ready version of the PowerPointpresentation with no problem.But what about projects—or online training demos—that require intense instructional design, engaging learningactivities, interactive quiz elements, and very rapid development timetables? My next project was the demo Imentioned earlier. I had no time to access the Help and Support drop-down list, although community support portaland help documentation links were readily available.UNBELIEVABLE INTEGRATIONFirst, I opened an existing PowerPoint presentation that was completed not too long ago as a template for onlinelearning. This template served as the basis for my short demo. But I really wanted to take advantage of the featuresof the Studio suite to pack as much as I could into the demo. Here is where Articulate Engage and Quizmaker cameinto play.After inserting my first Engage interaction (as simple as a mouse click on the Articulate ribbon section), I realizedthat what used to be 16 hours of development time just became 10 minutes. I copied and pasted text from a websiteinto this reusable learning object and added another.

Now I had two very clear and concise learning objects in my demo that reflected sound instructional design.What next? How about a quiz? Quizmaker was just as intuitive and well integrated with PowerPoint 2007 as Engage. One mouse click started thewizard-like process for entering either a quiz or survey. Question types to select from were diverse and, to my consternation, everything worked like it was supposed to. I wanted to add a multiple-choice question, then T/F, then….Wait—I only had 30 minutes left. (Remember, I did not once use the Help and Support features.) I published thedemo and previewed its functionality. Worked perfect, but I wanted to change the Articulate logo to the university’s.This took about five minutes to figure out.

I did attempt to learn how to load Flash-based individual questions in the Articulate object “Flash Movie.” Thisdidn’t work, but I attribute this failure more to operator error than Articulate. I could have used a different file pathdesignation or some other PowerPoint method, but I was running out of time. I published the demo to our MoodleLMS, and it worked just great within the Moodle course shell.

Conspicuously absent is the advanced scripting found in other authoring tools such as Lectora and ToolbookInstructor. However, if one is going to learn an ECMA-based object-oriented programming language, why not justlearn Adobe Flash and forego a rapid development tool such as Articulate?If you are a Flash programmer, you can build Community Interactions within Articulate Engage with the freeEngage development kit.

DOWNSIDES

I have only a few complaints. Some of the fields required when entering an Engage interaction or quiz are nothidden fields so what you enter will be seen by the end user. It’s a little frustrating to have to guess at what text orheadings will be where, but Engage gives you convenient means to re-edit the interaction. You may want to type thename of the field in its blank field to see the layout of the interaction before proceeding.

This program is RAM- and CPU-intensive. I tested it on both Vista Pro and XP Pro. Performance was fine on the VistaPro machine with 8GB of RAM but very slow on the four-year old XP laptop, even though it’s a fairly high-end laptopgeared towards multimedia production.
But there were never any system crashes, and this says a lot to me. Articulate Studio is a very well-crafted suite ofapplications, designed with a lot of forethought, dedicated to saving a developer like me an incredible amount oftime. It’s definitely worth the price tag because it ranks above most “end all of your troubles” WYSIWYG authoringtools on the market today that I’m familiar with.

RECOMMENDATION

If I were purchasing an enterprise license for a rapid development tool, Articulate Studio Professional would be ator near the top of the list. Its flexibility, scalability, ease of use, and astonishing performance make this an outstandingproduct. Unfortunately, many of us get caught up in the Adobe Captivate pricing go-round and sometimes don’tallow ourselves a closer look at higher-cost products that are more affordable in the long run.

Reviewed by Richard Karel, University of Tennessee, Knoxville

I keep on telling to me... why to listen others, if we have the ability and opportunity to experiment with ourselves….

Bet you can – download the free copy from the below link and give a try
http://www.articulate.com/downloads/freetrial-step1.aspx

eLearning Products - Corporate and Education

2009-06-22T04:05:00.000-07:00

Since the concept of eLearning emerged in the training industry there are many products evolved day by day to support and compliment one or more training activities. Take an example of my company, when I joined in year 2006 the product we used to sell was very limited but now as to provide consultive approach to our customers we end up in exploring more than a dozen of elearning tools. If you plan to implement elearning you should know the basic concepts and products. In this post we will discuss about learning management system, learning content management system and rapid elearning content development system to start off and in our next post we will cover the remaining products.

LMS or Learning Management System

A learning management system (LMS) is software for delivering, tracking and managing training/education. LMSs range from systems for managing training/educational records to software for distributing courses over the Internet and offering features for online collaboration. In many instances, corporate training departments purchase LMSs to automate record-keeping as well as the registration of employees for classroom and online courses. Student self-service (e.g., self-registration on instructor-led training), training workflow (e.g., user notification, manager approval, wait-list management), the provision of on-line learning (e.g., Computer-Based Training, read & understand), on-line assessment, management of continuous professional education (CPE), collaborative learning (e.g., application sharing, discussion threads), and training resource management (e.g., instructors, facilities, equipment), are dimensions to Learning Management Systems.
More info : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_management_system

LCMS or Learning Content Management System

A learning content management system (LCMS) is a related technology to the learning management system, in that it is focused on the development, management and publishing of the content that will typically be delivered via an LMS. An LCMS is a multi-user environment where developers may create, store, reuse, manage, and deliver digital learning content from a central object repository. The LMS cannot create and manipulate courses; it cannot reuse the content of one course to build another. The LCMS, however, can create, manage and deliver not only training modules but also manage and edit all the individual pieces that make up a catalog of training. LCMS applications allow users to create, import, manage, search for and reuse small units or 'chunks' of digital learning content/assets, commonly referred to as learning objects. These assets may include media files developed in other authoring tools, assessment items, simulations, text, graphics or any other object that makes up the content within the course being created. An LCMS manages the process of creating, editing, storing and delivering e-learning content, ILT materials and other training support deliverables such as job aids.
More info : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_content_management_system

Rapid eLearning Content Development

Today rapid eLearning is the buzzword in the eLearning industry. Rapid eLearning isemerging as the fastest-growing category of online training. It is web-based trainingcreated in far-lesser time than traditional eLearning. Rapid eLearning is beneficial ontwo key counts:1. It meets the current demand to rapidly create learning resources to addressbusiness events, competitive developments, product trainings, or otherbusiness needs.2. It helps minimize the time and resource contribution from the client.

Creating rapid eLearning is not an easy task. The typical challenges are listed below:
• Ensuring a look and feel that is consistent with traditional eLearning
• Using good and effective instructional design principles in a short time frame
• Integrating with LMS
• Creating detailed and consistent media elements in a short time frame
• Integrating the programming and HTML
• Providing advanced features such as links, tests, and glossary
• Meeting schedules without compromising on quality or learning effectiveness

More info : http://www.articulate.com/rapid-elearning/ - PPT to eLearningconversion toolMore info : http://www.24x7learning.com/metamorphosis - Word to eLearning conversion tool

Next post I will cover the products most used in ITES and IT sector.

2009-06-17T07:09:00.000-07:00

eLearning for the recession???

Have you started…. Walking rather than taking the car on short journeys, making a packed lunch rather thannipping out for a sandwich; putting on an extra woolly jumper rather than turning up the heating?

Then you’re not alone! Everyone is feeling the credit crunch pinch, and that includes your employer.

The rise in economic uncertainty is sure to lead to an unpredictable year ahead. And in unpredictable times,it’s natural to cut budgets and scale back to what are deemed the bare necessities. For some, this may wellmean training and career development are shelved until confidence rises and we return to a more stableworking environment. But what is the true cost of abandoning training at a time like this? Could it actuallyend up costing you more in the long run?

Training is often still (wrongly) viewed as a false economy. While it seems like an easy and obvious way tocut costs, it is essential to have re-skilling, productivity and retaining a competitive edge at the very top ofthe agenda. With recruitment frozen, and possibly even redundancies on the horizon, it’s essential that thecurrent workforce have the necessary skills to fill any gaps that emerge. Re-skilling (and quickly!) becomesmore important than ever. And in some sectors, such as finance and insurance, new regulation andcompliance is likely to be forthcoming. And with it, there will inevitably be training requirements. The tendency in an economic downturn may be to revert to reactive and immediately available solutions, which often means classroom-based training. But while this may be cheaper in the short term, in the long term an e-learning solution is likely to pay back in spades. An example of just how costs can be significantly saved is evident in a current contract undertaken by Epic for a major airline, whereby the e-learning development costs will be recouped within 6 months from savings on travel, accommodation and trainer costs.

Research shows that e-learning will ensure existing staff get up to speed quicker too as, unlike in aclassroom scenario, a learner is not necessarily slowed down by the pace or the questions of others.Moreover, the learning can be more ‘on tap’ and on a ‘need-to-know’ basis, with users having theopportunity to skip over any content they may already be familiar with.

So is it all doom and gloom? No. Can companies retain their competitive edge even in a recession? Yes.The credit crunch is forcing everybody to make some critical business decisions and ultimately that can beexcellent news for the balance sheet. But remember, as you streamline processes and define proceduresyou will discover skills gaps and highlight vital training requirements. Then it will be time to assess yourtraining strategy, and talk to your staff about what they need to do their job quicker, slicker and smarter. Andwhen that happens, just remember what e-learning can do for you.So how does e-learning help in a recession ?

• With oil prices high, e-learning reduces staff travel costs to training events. (And e-learning has theadded advantage of being the green alternative!)
• With staffing levels stretched, e-learning reduces time spent out of the office at courses
• With recruitment frozen, and possibly even redundancies, e-learning can be a cost-effective meansof filling the skills gap
• With a smaller busier workforce and possibly less time to dedicate to training, e-learning ensures afaster route to achieving successful learning outcomes
• With new regulation on the cards for some sectors, e-learning is the best way of getting employeesup to speed as quickly as possible
• With competitive advantage being more important than ever in an economic downturn, an elearningplatform on which to build intellectual capital can be the answer
• With new technology inevitably marching forwards at a pace, teaming up with a company like Epic,will ensure you continue to meet the high expectations of workers for technology-based learning.

2009-06-15T06:50:00.000-07:00

Why Use e-learning?

E-Learning has a significant contribution to make in improving the effectiveness of learning, but like any other learning method needs to be applied to appropriate learning situations.

E-Learning is particularly useful in the following circumstances

Where the learner is unable, or unwilling, to attend courses at an educational institution. The reasons for this might include:

If the learner is in employment, irregular work patterns such as shift work
The employer is unable to release employees because of work demands
The learner has domestic responsibilities that preclude him/her from attending taught courses.

E-Learning provides a means to deliver learning to an off-site location.

To enhance and broaden the learning experience in a taught programme.
E-Learning can provide an additional method for delivering learning content in a multimedia format, more tutorial support opportunities and an alternative assessment approach.
Where the educational institution wants to target learners who are geographically dispersed, in the UK or overseas.

E-Learning provides a delivery system for learning content and tutorial support that is not location dependent.

Where individual learners have an urgent need for specific learning and want to access a course ‘on demand’.
E-Learning courses can be made available at any time and from any location.
Where there is a need for a cohort of learners to collaborate on tasks, yet it is difficult to get learners together at the same time and place.
E-Learning provides a way of enabling collaboration in learning activities over the internet.

However, some learning needs do not lend themselves to the use of e-learning and the following are generally not suitable:

Where the learning demands a high degree of face-to-face contact between students and tutor for the purposes of group work.
Where access is needed to facilities such as laboratories and equipment.
Where the student target group needs the tutor to provide a significant amount of motivation and support, also where the students need the discipline of regular and possibly frequent attendance at a physical centre to maintain their study momentum.

It is often the case that programme teams construct a learning programme that utilises a mix of learning methods, including e-learning, to enhance the overall learning experience. Such programmes are often referred to as ‘blended learning programmes’.

eLearning solution for India!

2009-06-15T01:40:00.000-07:00

E-Learning in India:

E-learning or electronic learning in India is gaining prominence slowly, but indeed steadily. This is due to the fact that more than half the population of India today is below 25 years of age and the number of Internet users are growing continuously. The tremendous growth of the economy in the recent past has also helped in the growth of online education in India, infact elearning is the best way to facilitate training during recession times. E-learning in India is specially popular with the young professionals who have joined the work force quite early but still would like to continue their education that may help them move up their career ladder quickly and safely. They find online education in India very convenient, as the nature of the course work does not require them to attend regular classes. Moreover reputed institutes like Indian Institute of Management, IMT - Gaziabad, Thapar university from Patiala are today offering online degrees and e-learning courses.

India's current economic boom can be largely attributed to the availability of educated manpower. However as the demands of the global marketplace increase, manpower skill deficiencies are becoming more evident and are working against India's race towards achieving those magical growth predictions.

eLearning companies helps organisations meet talent development challenges. To address the growing manpower deficiencies and shortages, every organization in the country, is investing heavily in talent management and resource training across levels, from fresh graduates to senior management. Organizations are realizing that using a blend of technology-based training in their skill enhancement process can help them scale up without compromising on quality and accountability. Thus e-learning in India makes it possible for the learners to pursue their education from reputed institutes without much hassle.

24x7 Learning, is a pioneer Talent Lifecycle Management Company in India providing end-to-end learning solutions. From inception in 2001, we have evolved with changing market needs. Headquartered at Bangalore, the company has presence in the major economic hubs of India.24x7 Learning has earned the unique distinction of implementing the largest number of virtual corporate universities in the country at some of the biggest names across verticals.
We will be posting latest information about elearning technologies and cost effective elearning solutions from 24x7learning. http://24x7learning.com/