The Learned Man!

IGNOU-ICDE Conference

With its own dedicated satellite launched in 2004 solely for education and training purposes, India has embarked on technology supported distance learning, namely eLearning. Numerous eLearning initiatives are mushrooming in the country, launched by central and state institutions, agencies, private service providers and NGOs. The demand for eLearning in the Indian corporate sector, though still in a nascent state, is expected to grow rapidly.

German Technical Cooperation (Deutsche Gesellschaft fuer Technische Zusammenarbeit, GTZ) has been building capacities in eLearning in India for its partner institutions under the banner of the “Industrial Services Network – ISN” since 2003 through seminars, workshops and an eight months comprehensive eLearning programme.

Against this background GTZ and ISN will contribute two panels and a pre-conference workshop to the IGNOU-ICDE (International Council for Open and Distance Education) conference in November 2005. The panels cover the topics “Building eLearning Competence Centers in India” and “European Approaches on Quality Assurance in Internet based Knowledge Building. And what is the perspective in India?”.

In the full-day hands-on workshop on “How to produce instructional modules on the Internet” the participants will design eLearning course modules. The results will be published instantly on the Internet and the participants will receive certificates in accordance to the individual results. The workshop, which is held on November 18^th at IGNOU in Delhi, addresses teachers, trainers and educational experts. Registration is still possible!

For more information on the workshop and the conference see the ISN-homepage and the IGNOU-site for the conference .

LMS Market Scenario in India

Here are some of my observations on the current scenario in India as it were to pertain to the market for LMS solutions:

1. India is experiencing high GDP growth.
2. The private and public sector is waking up to the reality of learning and performance management solutions.
3. Faculty demographics are changing; older faculty are retiring and are being replaced by younger faculty who have a higher comfort level with newer technology and associated solutions.
4. Being a cost sensitive market , India needs a different pricing mechanism for learning and performance management solutions and products.
5. India has a 20 million strong student crowd who can pay.
6. Indian private universities cater to 60% of 18-25 year old population and 90% of the education spend

Some India vendors with their own products: Kalzoom, Tata Interactive, 24x7 Learning

Plateau has partnered Edutech (middle east based vendor), Sumtotal has a Hyderabad based development center, WebCT has an eye on the Indian market.