Tech university's learning website launched

The e-learning website of the Visvesvaraya Technological University (VTU) has been formally launched.

Launching the website www: http://elearning.vtu.ac on January 8, deputy chief minister Siddaramaiah said, "We need to understand if IT can help bring about a balance in effectively providing rural empowerment and social justice."

He said the benefits of technology should reach villages to enable rural students to compete with their urban counterparts. He hoped that the website launched by the VTU will meet the need. Siddaramaiah reiterated that VTU was established in 1998 during the previous Janata Dal regime.

The website is developed by the e-learning centre of the VTU. All satellite-based and web-based content will be deployed in the website so that any student from any part of the world can access content at any time, said VTU vice-chancellor Dr K Balaveera Reddy, who presided over the function.

In the initiative, VTU Centre will make videobased lecture and e-learning courseware available for free on the website. The courseware could include material such as lecture notes, course outlines, reading lists and assignments/quizzes including industry-related courseware

The VTU e-Learning Centre, established in August 2003 at the SJCE Campus here and facilitating distance education and training to the students and faculty of VTU through satellite and web, has already collected and processed 120 sessions of lectures of four engineering subjects "" digital signal processing, strength of materials, mathematics-III and operating systems.

The high quality digital interactive e-learning content developers include Mysore's ExcelSoft, which has designed the website.

With the network of 100 engineering colleges across Karnataka, VTU has become the single largest connected university in India.

Besides two dry runs, VTU transmitted 126 live lecture sessions from VTU Studio from September 15, 2004 to December 20, 2004 to over one lakh students.