On the merits of e-learning

Over the last few years, I have become increasingly involved in elearning. I was fortunate to be invited to serve on the Steering Committee of the Swiss Virtual Campus [1] and this has enabled me to see at first hand the many elearning developments that are taking place on campus universities in Switzerland. The Swiss Virtual campus project started in 1999 and has had a significant impact on elearning in Switzerland. Approximately CHF 50-million or € 35-million in funds have been distributed to various university consortia in order to develop elearning courses. They used a fifty-fifty financing model between federal government and educational institutions; ten universities, two Swiss federal institutes of technology, and seven universities of applied sciences took part. Many outstanding examples of elearning were produced, although I have seen few in the informatics area. SVC courses are not usually whole programmes, but teaching units available on the Internet. They replace conventional university lectures, many of which are held in severely overcrowded auditoriums. At this stage, it should be emphasised that SVC is not aiming to transfer entire courses of study to the Internet. On the contrary, compulsory online courses are intended to supplement existing lectures and training programmes.