E-LEARNING COMES OF AGE

E-learning it seems has really come of age.  Very recently, Loyola College became the first college in Chennai to have access to the international Gale Group's online service through the Chennai-based, Edutech India.  In Chennai, there are already two other institutions who have subscribed to this service, namely, the TB Research Centre (ICMR) and Cognizant Technology Solutions (CTS).  With this service, not only students of Loyola but also students of other colleges and knowledge seeking public can have access to an international database of reference material.

The Gale Group, an operating unit within the Thomson Learning Division (TLD) of the Thomson Corporation is the largest publisher of reference material in the world.  Its online database gives access to over 6,000 international journals, which include full texts and abstracts, with accurate, relevant and up-to-date information dating back to twenty years.  The content includes encyclopaedias, almanacs, bibliographies, biographies, statistics, monographs and directories.  Everyday more than two lakh researchers across the globe access more than ten million web pages on their online databases.  The Gale Group also publishes more than 4 million essays or entries; 2 million indexed periodical articles, 50,000 photographs, diagrams and maps to which students have access every year.

The management of Loyola College, which has invested over a lakh of rupees to subscribe to the service, has decided to offer the service free of cost to its students.  Loyola College is equipped with an intranet that connects all the Departments through Optical Fibre Cable.  Students can now access reference material from all over the world and from any discipline, either from the computers in their departments or at the college's Internet centre.  Ordinarily, to subscribe to these journals in print would cost any institution a huge investment running into crores of rupees.  With this service, it is almost as good as having all 6,000 journals in print. One can download the information that one requires, either as text alone or complete with pictures and take printouts.  Subscription to the service entails access to a minimum of 150 journals.  The interesting thing however is that this list of 150 can be changed at any given point of time thus literally giving the institution access to all the 6,000 journals.

Fr Peter Francis, SJ, while inaugurating the service said that the era of 'e-learning' had arrived and services like this indicated how knowledge would be digitised and access made easy to all. Reacting to the announcement of this service one of the Professor said that research, which would normally take weeks and months to complete, would be much easier to finish. 

Bringing this service to Chennai and India is Edutech, which is a venture, promoted by NRIs.  Established in 1990, it has its head office in Dubai with offices in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi. The range of products included in Edutech India's portfolio include Learning Management System, Online Information and Library Resources, Testing and Assessment Software, expert guided training in the areas of Business, Finance and IT skills. Edutech India has tie-ups with world leaders in their respective areas to bring these resources to our customers.  Edutech in India has its headquarters in Chennai, with offices in Bangalore, Mumbai and New Delhi.

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