http://www.deccanherald.com/Content/May12008/dheducation2008043065506.asp

Learning through a distance L Subramani Many students in rural engineering colleges have benefited from VTU's e-learning programme offered in partnership with IBM.

Ashwin David has no problems managing his engineering lessons. A student with Dr Timmiah Institute of Engineering - based in Kolar Gold Fields - the prospect of studying in a rural college far from the IT hub doesn't actually make Ashwin feel he is missing something.

That is because Visveswariah Technical University (VTU) to which Ashwin's institution is an affiliate, has decided to enhance knowledge and understanding of students like him through e-learning.

As one of the universities in the country making full use of Edusat (Educational Satellite which India put into orbit four years ago), VTU has doubled the advantage by establishing a partnership with IBM, ensuring students get to learn the latest technology trends from industry experts.

"Our association with VTU goes back to 2005," explained Kalpana Margabandhu, Director, Websphere Development and Chairperson IWLC, IBM. "Our educational initiative (under university relations programme) is not only looking at potential students who would work with us, but is also an enabler for students who often want to equip themselves to work in the industry."

VTU Edusat programme has been offering two courses for the post graduate students: network - Enterprise Database Fundamentals (leading to DB2 certification) and J2EE Programming using Eclipse and WSAD (leading to WebSphere Studio Application Developer certification). 

The e-learning programme has been an extension of an in-house programme offered by IBM to their own employees needing training, who are scattered across different locations and needed to learn at their own pace.

Since these topics deal with the intricacies of technology, e-learning was found to be a suitable mode of learning.
"Our partnership with VTU has worked really well thanks to their infrastructure," observed Kalpana. "With around 30 colleges having a two way communication with the studio — which would allow students to pose questions directly to the experts — our trainers would deliver lectures which were broadcast live through Edusat to all the colleges. Later, we had to copy the lectures on CDs and distribute them to students." 

In 2007, the e-learning programme was held in three phases and ran into 100 hours. Over 5,000 students of VTU colleges were said to have benefited from it. Experts from IBM covered technology topics such as System Z, Java, Web 2.0, Eclipse, Cell Architecture, SOA, High Performance Computing, Linux, DB2, Autonomic Computing,
Rational, AIX, GBS Applications etc.
 
"We found topics like J2EE and mobile technology extremely useful," Ashwin David said. "In fact, the topics chosen for the programme were very relevant to our course. Several of my own classmates attended these lectures and got to learn a lot of new developments."

In the 2008 edition of the programme, IBM is including a module on soft skills with a view to improving communication skills among students. This is after the company's leaders found communication to be an important area (in their India risk assessment exercise). Meant to be a self-learning module, lectures will be recorded and distributed to students of universities who have tie-ups and MoUs with IBM, besides VTU. 

On the technical side, this year's programme would cover enterprise-related technology. These will be broken down into small modules and would include IBM's vision of the future enterprises. "Ever since the first year of the programme, we have been learning how to improve it," Kalpana said.

"Also, we include a lot of technology advancements that happen on the field that make the programme up-to-date. One of the ideas this year is to post the lectures in Youtube for students to view at their own convenience."

This year's programme will also consist of an online test and a contest for students, which will be hosted in an external URL at the end of the series. Experts from the IT giant who deliver the lectures will talk about the contest and will motivate students to take part in it.

--
Frederick FN Noronha * Independent Journalist
http://fn.goa-india.org * Phone +91-832-2409490
Cell +91-9970157402 (sometimes out of range)
http://www.youtube.com/user/fredericknoronha