Thursday, March 13, 2008

The virtual Indian campus

With the changes in the education system and with the induction of the internet as well as the intra net to the modern society, the Indian education system has changed. One doesn’t have to physically show up on campus anymore. The modern campus has indeed become virtual. No more going to classes or actually waking up early hours in order to show up for the tests or whatever.

Wireless technology has been introduced on Indian campuses very recently. 802.11b and 802.11g are the couple of wireless bandwidths that have been introduced on campus. Using this technology, virtual classrooms are held via video conferencing. This is making life easier for students as well as teachers.

Nowadays, classes are held using the wireless technologies. Team teaching can actually be done using this technology. Institutions like RDI India are actually hosting on line classrooms and making good use of the facility. Indira Gandhi Open University or IGNOU, Jadavpur University in Kolkata as well as a host of other universities are making good use of the wireless virtual classrooms. Even Punjab tech university is about to set up an on line university pretty soon.

Another aspect of making classrooms virtual is the fact that teachers can be hired from anywhere. However, the cost of the virtual classroom is never going to go down. The cost of setting up a virtual classroom is actually around 10 crore. By implementing a virtual classroom one thing is completely solved. A lot of times students don’t get opportunities to enroll into a course due to the lack of availability of seats. This problem can be completely avoided by starting a virtual campus. Nevertheless, the virtual campus is a great thing and with the wireless computer networking technology in place, this is indeed the coolest technology ever innovated.

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