The adoption of computer and Internet for learning is revolutionizing the way people learn, what they learn, and from whom they learn. The global information economy and its marketplace are moving educators to reshape higher education around the world.
Universities and businesses alike are re-examining their relationships and their features. As they implement updated strategies they are redefining venue and pedagogy, which means they must also redefine measures of quality. The result is turning out to be both positive and important - for their institutions, for their students, and for the societies they serve.

Global Economy and the Internet

The most important force in this development is the global information economy. Never has education been so important to so many. Governments, companies, and individuals all recognize that assembly-line labour is valuable, the real competitive advantage lies in a well-educated imagination, producing breakthrough ideas that advance the technologies and lead to new products, new initiatives, and ultimately a stronger and wealthy society. It's obvious that the global economy is largely the result of modern information, telecommunication, and transportation systems. And just as this worldwide system evolved, with its increasing demand for a better-educated workforce, the Internet was born, followed shortly by its World Wide Web.

The Internet, itself created by universities, brought into play some fundamental characteristics. The Internet essentially represented the death of distance. One small example: a university in California put a course on the Web as an accommodation to some of its local working graduate students, and one of the first registration inquiries came from Hong Kong. Distance doesn't matter.

Similarly, most courses on the Internet permit the student to be time-independent, free of the need to attend class on certain days and at specified times. The basic requirement is for Internet access and a well-crafted, properly supported course in digital format and systems to monitor quality and assess results.

The potential for education and the development of the Internet are inextricably linked. The growth of the Internet was initially focused on the U.S. and all too often is mostly identified with western industrialized countries. But serious change happened in the last decade and its impact is much felt in developing economies.

Speaking in Singapore in November, Nicholas Negroponte, Director of the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, declared that developing countries will soon dominate Internet usage, and that wireless technology will speed the process. He pointed out that an exodus of software programmers from India, for example, shows that richer countries have no monopoly on the necessary expertise, and that in Asia, India and China in particular have great Internet potential, with India farther along at present.

The product-Education

It is often observed that education is becoming a commodity. The customer, -the student or perhaps the employer - decides what needs to be learned, shops for a program that can meet the requirement with the right conditions at the right price, and buys. Shopping includes some familiar considerations: Is the product offered under a trusted brand? Does it carry an authoritative Seal of Approval? The focus is more on the results that the education as a product gives in improving the skills and enhancement in productivity.

The general practice is that a student went to college at age 18 or there abouts, completed a degree in about four years, and went off to the world of work. Once these students joins a company fulltime, continued education remains an occupational requirement, as technologies advance, jobs develop and disappear, and new skills are demanded. Today's career involves progress through a succession of companies and a constant need to keep up with ferment of innovation and change. So one never really completes an education.

In practical terms, what does that mean? First, education becomes a routine part of the day-to-day environment at work or at home. It must be available when it's needed, under conditions that don't make learning, work and home mutually exclusive factors. All these activities need to go in tandem in a way that one strengthens the other. Within universities the amazing growth of distance learning programme is largely a response to that fundamental requirement that is felt across business and society.

The fundamental result is that higher education in moving away from the traditional schedules and processes of instruction, to an emphasis on student learning - however that learning is accomplished.

In a rapidly changing technological and economic world learning and aptitude are more than ever becoming determinants of the future. Learning as such is subject to changing demands. Next to 'stockpiling knowledge' during a specific career period in highly specialised educational institutions, the ability to acquire and intensify the capacity of solving problems in a variety of co-operational contexts and learning settings is the new focus of attention.

Learning - The interaction process

Learning is a social process, complemented by individual activities. Whenever people meet, they learn from each other; and at places where people learn, they must be able to communicate. Learning is and will remain an encounter between people. And no doubt the primary force in education is the interaction between student and teacher irrespective of whether this interaction is virtual or real. Technologies, Machines and media may simply prove supportive in the process.

The opportunity that information age opens to Developing countries like India in building a strong economy is enormous. And the first step in acquiring such a growth is to make use of the power of computers for education.