Developing content for education

AMONG THE surviving dotcom companies that dot India's "cyberia", the education portals do find a promising slot. The more creative and resourceful among them are bound to do much more than just survive. It is here that the significance of service providers such as Instructional Technologies Private Ltd. (ITPL) get pronounced.

ITPL is a spin-off of the Centre for American Education (CAE), and is set up as a service provider to cater to dotcoms and multimedia companies. The focus is on providing content and content management services, its primary activities being multimedia development in academic and non-academic disciplines, software development and corporate training.

It is all about creating instructional design to make learning efficient for the user, says Mr. Vinay Kumar, the company CEO. "We create instructional material. We have already signed MoUs with a couple of private engineering colleges in this regard," he explains. Incidentally, ITPL has created a substantial portion of the content for the education portal, eGurukul.

The company's content development lays special stress on academic curriculum and self-learning. While the academic stream focuses on specialising in curriculum mapping for schools and higher education segments with emphasis on Indian, European and U.S. curricula, the self-learning content focuses on supplementing traditional academic curriculum and also on academic learning areas such as Time Management, Communication Skills, Impact with Assertiveness and Team Development.

With the entry of broadband and networking between Bangalore and Singapore's high-speed broadband systems, the company is now trying to stay ahead of the rest. Its eyes are firmly set on grabbing a portion of the projected $ 3 trillion worldwide content business.

To tap the huge potential in the online education sector, the company is also looking at developing assessment and evaulation tools. Since offline content is unlikely to disappear from the Indian traditional education system, ITPL has set in place content developers from various academic spheres, all geared up to meet the stringent standards of tomorrow.

Australian Edn. Exhibition

IDP Education Australia is organising an Australian Education exhibition in the City on April 8 and 9 for students opting for higher education in that country. This is the seventh such exhibition in which over 40 Australian institutions are expected to participate. The venue is Hotel Taj Residency.

The high-point of this year's exhibition is that interviews will be organised at the venue for on-the-spot selection of students to study in Australia.

The exhibition will feature information on over 10,000 courses in Australia. Visiting professors and faculty members of Australian institutions will be present for counselling and providing enquiry services. Information related to admission procedures and visa will also be provided.

Quality Management

Here is more news for students of the cyberbuff kind. Onlinevarsity.com, the online education portal by Aptech, has tied up with Qimpro College to offer a set of courses that cover the new quality management standards. The programme is the portal's first non-IT course.

There are a total of five courses, all focussed on the new quality management standards of ISO 9001:2001. The courses range from offering an overview of the ISO 9001:2001 to the Manager Guide to ISO 9001, to the Internal Auditors Training for ISO 9001:2000.

Online Varsity has over 80,000 students now and offers over 80 courses, covering fields as diverse as e-business, Internet technologies, finance, databases, and sales and marketing. Based on a new model of Instructional Design and Technology, OnlineVarsity.com is a learning model built on various modes of communication, including multimedia, audio and video.

Leadership Award

Rajaram A.P.Gowda, president of the Students Council, St. Joseph's College of Commerce, has been awarded Special Leadership Award for successfully organising the SPIEL sports fest, CHANAKYA, the management fest, ENACT, the college theatre fest, and DHWANI, the cultural fest. The special award was given away on March 24, the college day.

Rasheed Kappan

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