Log in ....Tribune--Feature article

Monday, January 7, 2002		Article

After lovechandigarh, it is online tutorials
Nishikant Dwivedi

AKHIL Verma, a final year student of Production Engineering Department, Punjab Engineering College, Chandigarh has developed an online college and tutorial system. "This is an Online Tutorial System, to be used by any type of institute willing to hold its various courses through the Internet," Verma, who also has lovechandigarh.com to his credit, says.

The proposed system is that, first a candidate has to register for the course, (he should have the requisite eligibility qualifications for the same). He is assigned a particular username and password for accessing his account. After the candidate registers, he has to pay the requisite fee online. This will be followed by online lessons and tutorials. The candidate is provided with online illustrated study material together with downloadable lessons, pictures or text material, audio and video streams of lessons etc. The system is equipped with a real-time video teaching facility for interacting with the experts in that subject, this would be possible with the help of web cameras.

After taking the lessons and having interactive sessions with the experts, the candidate is ready to take the test before the registration duration is over. An online test is conducted which has a time limit, in the objective type. As soon as the candidate completes the test, answers are submitted and the objective test marks and ranking is obtained online, instantly! The marks are added automatically to the candidate's account.

This is followed by instantaneous preparation of the final result of the student and an electronic mark-sheet and certificate is prepared. This is sent to the student electronically (via e-mail). Proper security arrangements are there to prevent unauthorised access. The student now becomes the certified pass-out of the institute and his particulars can be verified online at any time.

"It provides a whole lot of convenience for the students willing to take up various courses, which are not available to them in local institutions. For example, a specialisation course in Plastic Technology is available only in a particular institute at California. For local students, it is impossible to take it up without going over to California. But, with the help of our system, the institute can hold its courses online, accept fees online and even interact to the students in real time through Web-conferencing," Verma says. "Though we have some foreign universities providing their courses online, but none of them provides the technology to other institutes so that they can also provide it online. The technology assumes greatest importance in a country like India since it would be more economical for providing the courses online rather than investing highly on development of infrastructure for the same especially for non-conventional specialised courses," he added. Akhil has developed a full-fledged course in work study branch of Production Engineering for testing the system with his team mates. "The response is really encouraging," he says.