Monday, February 12, 2001		Article

Online course providers need to do their homework
By Dinesh Kumar

ONLINE courses promise to change learning experience. Sitting at home one can acquire degrees that one always wanted to have. Some enthusiastic writers have gone to the extent to say that conventional teachers will soon be outdated as they would be replaced by online teachers. It certainly seems to have several benefits over conventional learning. Students are not limited by geography or time — they can do these courses anytime and anywhere. The learning experience can also be enhanced greatly, with graphics and sounds getting across the message more efficiently than any teacher can. Web sites and CDs promise to change conventional schools, forever.

Today, there are more than 100 sites offering help for various competitive exams, like pre-medical tests, engineering, IAS and MBA. If sites offering software and other courses are added, the number could be well over 1000, since a search for different courses always yields a sizeable number of sites that offer online education. Foreign degrees are now accessible, indeed!

While this sounds good, the enthusiasm is somewhat misplaced. Just like the dotcom companies, which went into business without assessing their business models properly, the providers of online learning, competitive tests and others, are also caught in a bind. True, online learning offers a cheap way of transmitting data, but it is doubtful that the costs of doing any course through the Internet have been estimated correctly. Last year, online tests for use of students were made. They were offered it as an extension of the classroom, free of cost. Not one of them could do it completely. When the students did it at home, parents were worried about rising telephone bills — a test would take at least 2 hours to do. Another option was tried, whereby students could download the tests at their end, do it and then fill in the answers online. Even this failed as many questions required calculations and printing the entire paper. Anyone who has paid for printer cartridges knows how expensive it is to print 30 pages of a test. It was cheaper and much more efficient to do in the classroom.

There was another danger. Students often felt bored sitting in front of a computer screen. Switching on to multimedia and playing those devastating games was too much of a temptation for many persons. Online tests thus went for a six. "In the class we are able to sit for two hours and complete the test as we know that we are being watched. In a cyber café it is much too expensive and besides the tendency is always to chat or look at different sites," a student says.

These were problems indeed. After a lot of experimentation, it was found that it was better to take the tests the conventional way.

We forget that a person who decides to take an online test must pay through his nose. Assuming that he has a computer, he has to pay on three fronts: the Internet Service Provider, the telephone bill, and the fees to the institute offering the course. In a country like India, another variable must be added — the availability of electricity. In small towns and villages, it means doing the course at odd hours. It might be cheaper to just take a bus and go to the nearest city and do the course.

This is not say that online courses have no future. The Internet is about information and community, which is also the objective of education. A person can achieve both online. There has to be a high level of motivation to learn, which would keep the learner away from useless surfing. Secondly, the cost must come down. Today even if the Internet access if free, a person is deterred by high telephone bills. In a cybercafe one has to pay by the hour and even that works out to be quite expensive.

Online education has a limited scope. First, the target market must be working adults who want to improve their skills in one area or another. This would give them focus. Second, the government must move from charging on the basis of telephone calls and move to a fixed charge. Alternately, if cable Internet access becomes feasible, people would feel free to take up online courses without having to pay high telephone bills.

Finally, the cost of online education still remains unaffordable. One site offers an MBA test for Rs 400 per test whereas in the class the cost of such a test in around Rs 25. Another site for IAS 2001 preparation offers a set of 30 tests for Rs 6000, while a print edition of such tests is available for a fraction of this amount. It remains doubtful that students would be willing to pay such high amounts and also for Internet access, especially when photocopies of note and tests are easily available at cheaper rates.

Online education has tremendous scope. For a country like India where people live in far-flung areas, it could be a means of spreading education. Unfortunately, online education remains limited to the elites who can afford such education. That is why many Web sites, hoping to cash in on the craze for tuitions, may be in for terrible times, just like the dotcom companies that are folding up these days.