Today internet has emerged as a big player providing reliable and easy communication among students and teachers which further provided the space for a virtual university environment. Technology-based education on high-end platforms has brought a revolution by providing round-the-clock classes, 365 days admission, and no time dependency .
Virtual university concept is booming in the education sector. In lieu of traditional knowledge or conventional pattern of education people are shifting towards non-conventional education like online education. It is a boon for the working class who have had to leave their education because of family problems or other reasons. Such people can join these virtual universities to continue or resume their education and to acquire more skills that will help with better job opportunities. Moreover, it also helps in improving the literacy rate of the country.
In brief, we can say virtual university is like a multimedia learning environment on networks. Virtual university is more comfortable than our conventional method of learning. Software like Skype are highly effective on networks used for receiving and delivering information. Interestingly we can find a number of courses in these virtual universities like regular curriculum degrees to non-conventional certificates and diplomas. It also helps the students enhance their skills in both personal and professional environment .
Virtual University Model
In this figure it is clearly depicts that virtual university is delivering all the virtues of a regular university, rather the advantage is that the student learning at their own pace also the university is delivering the contents as and when wished by the student. It is helping the students to gain knowledge in a similar environment as of traditional classrooms with their own level of understanding and pace.
Advantage of Virtual University-
- It removes geographical barriers and allows students to learn from anywhere.
- It is collaborative learning and allows students to learn in cross culture environment.
- It provides flexible study environment and benefits learning anytime, and anywhere.
- Now, learning is no longer location dependent and learners are able to take courses independent of their physical location.
- It provides both teacher and learner a platform to present and learn according to their comfort zone.
Traditional vs. Virtual University
Virtual/Online universities and traditional university both have same goal. They provide good opportunity to learn something which enables them to grow in their chosen field and not only earn a degree but also implement their learning in real time. Although their purpose is the same, both having some notable differences in the approach they take, making them distinctly apart.
Traditional vs Virtual University
| Traditional University | Virtual University |
| In conventional university we have predefined class schedule. | In virtual university students can manage classes on their own. |
| In conventional university every day you need to cover some distance to attend the classes. | In virtual university you can attend your lecture or classes from home. |
| Traditional university is good for students who want to complete their degree on regular basis. | If somebody wants to pursue their degree while doing job then virtual university is better option for them. |
| You need to pay high prices for some courses in traditional university like MBA, MCA and other professional courses. |
You can complete any professional course at very low prices through virtual university and shape your career. |
| Students always refrain from using technology. | Students will have a higher level of computer literacy than students in traditional universities. |
Some success stories or case studies of virtual universities-
NPTEL- National Programme for Technology Enabled Learning
National Programme for Technology Enabled Learning is a great initiative of Government of India, a joint venture of IIT and IIMs in collaborative efforts of the Ministry of Human Resources Development. One can access the NPTEL through its website i.e. www.nptel.ac.in.
NROER- National Repository on Open Educational Resources
The basic objective of NROER is to provide digital resources to students and teachers of the country. It is also aimed at providing participation of the community in development and sharing of digital resources. The major objective was to improve the quality and standardize education. NROER also helps teachers create and share contextual learning and teaching resources.
YouTube- It is one of the most popular video sharing websites in the world owned by the Google incorporation. This website is very popular among audiences because of millions of videos covering each aspect be it lifestyle, entertainment, education, knowledge sharing experiences, TV shows, music, movies, etc. One can post their video on YouTube channels and share with family, friends or with the global community. Videos can also be viewed online or offline. The download facility of the YouTube makes it more popular. There are millions of videos which are available for free download. This can be found on www.youtube.com.
Spoken Tutorial- It is an initiative of National Mission on Education, Govt. of India through ICT (NMEICT). It is a rather friendly forum for online discussion registration to the forum is completely free and hardly takes a few minutes to get registered. It provides services on many fronts like you attach files to your post’s directly from your computer. You can give links to web pages or videos from other video websites. One can get the free training of popular programming software’s like Linux, PHP & My SQL, Java, and C/C++ on spoken tutorial. Spoken tutorial also has provision of online test.
Wiki University- Commonly called Wikiversity offering more than 20 international languages like French, German, Dutch, Italian, Russian, Portuguese etc is a knowledge platform with the most popular e-Learning platform. The common Wiki products are Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikinews, Wikiquotes, Wikibooks, Wikidata, Wikispecies, Wikisources, Wikivoyages, Mediwiki, Metawiki shows the popularity of this eLearning source. With more than 22,000 eLearning resources, there are various schools, portals, courses, learning projects available for the students. The hand-on experience session, counsellor support makes this university more popular among working professionals.