Virtual classrooms go commercial

Ramesh Thorat (not his real name) is at home. But sitting on his computer, he is intently watching and listening to a lecture on the internet. He has a broadband connection, a webcam and even a microphone to interact with the lecturer if he has any question. In fact, Thorat is one of the many engineering graduates from the Pune Institute of Computer Technology (PICT) who studies in a “virtual classroom” called “kPoint”.

Developed by Pune-based Great Software Laboratory Pvt Ltd (GS Lab), this virtual classroom tool “kPoint” is a concept which is fast catching up in the city. It has been successfully deployed at outsourced product development (OPD) firm Persistent Systems, too, to train newly-recruited engineering graduates at its Nagpur campus from its parent facility in Pune.

And very soon, over 250 colleges affiliated to University of Pune will have this system operational for their teachers and students to take a leap in the distance education space using the “virtual classroom” concept. The tool developed is also being effectively used by an Indian classical music training portal “Shadja-Madhyam” for its students located in the US and European countries.

Point is not the only tool available in the market, but it is the first Indian tool to be launched commercially. “Few competitors like Elluminate Inc from Canada and Saba Inc from the US do provide similar tools. But these come at very high costs and are primarily meant for companies,” asserts G S Lab Managing Director Shridhar Shukla.

“The e-learning tools as well as the satellite TV services available in India for education are not interactive. With travel costs increasing everyday and the dearth of qualified teaching staff emerging as the biggest challenge for educational institutions as well as for companies, there is an immense scope for virtual learning tools and products. kPoint provides almost all interactive platforms available in a regular classroom. Hence, it will prove to be a revolutionary tool in “virtual learning” space,” he believes.

Remotely-located industry experts and teachers interact with groups of students and graduate trainees over an audio-visual platform, instant messaging (IMs), slide shows combined with the blackboard teaching facility — all simultaneously. kPoint also allows users to store the contents of lectures or training sessions held by an expert. This enables institutions or companies to reproduce the content as per requirements and also search for the required content.

In India alone, the estimated market for distance learning tools is worth $40 billion. GS Lab has invested approximately Rs 5 crore to develop this tool over the last few years. Though Shukla’s not sure of the returns, he is willing to wait. He reasons that on an average, according to GS Lab, a company spends around Rs 3 lakh to make a fresher productive after recruitment. The training and knowledge refreshment costs of experienced professionals are up to Rs 20,000 per year. GS Lab believes, these costs would come down with the use of kPoint.

Globally, virtual classrooms are well established. Most of the virtual study programmes use an e-learning platform (Learning Management System — LMS) to administer students and courses and to provide learning content. Among them are blackboard, WebCT, moodle, joomlaLMS, SharePointLMS and Tadaros. Linden Lab's Second Life, too, recently become a virtual classroom for major colleges and universities, including Princeton, Rice University, Pepperdine University, University of Derby (UK), and Vassar, the Open University (UK). Language learning in virtual worlds is the most widespread type of education in 3D virtual spaces, with many universities, mainstream language institutes and private language schools using 3D virtual environments to support language learning.