A discussion on E-learning offered in Malaysian universities: Pros and Cons from the students perpective



What is E-learning:

E-learning involves the use of a computer or electronic device in some way to transfer of skills and knowledge such as deliver training, educational or learning resources through Internet or an Intranet. In nowadays, E-leaning has implemented in most universities to convenience their student to get information. Students have free access to these materials as when needed anytime and anywhere by just using the internet.

Pros:

Save the cost of travelling such as petrol cost and public transport cost. Students can easily get their learning resources from internet by just login into website without physically present in a university. This system not only help student reduce a lot of cost travelling but is also help to save a time of traveling such as avoid traffic jam because student can easily get their leaning resources with the use of internet by just staying at their own house.

Students can have wider leaning option which is not restricted to the geographic location. For example, student who studies in Malaysia can access to the resources upload by other foreign university such as get teaching materials through e-libraries. These help students easier to get additional information from foreign knowledge to make their process of studies easier .Thus, more information or opinion can be exchanges between local knowledge and foreign knowledge.

Cons:

Since text format is only the tool of communication has implemented in e-learning, the conflict between student and lecture will arise due to lack of face-to-face communication. Without physically face to face communication, they may lose the directions and get confused on the course of activities.The social skill of student will not be trained and it bring problem to students when they go for work.


Students will become lazy and ineffective, due to being spoon fed by the educational institutions. With e-learning, most educational task is done either by the tutor or some sophisticated software, leaving students with the simple task of just downloading notes and reading them. Although this may make the learning process easier and more effective, it also runs the risk of creating dependent and lazy students. Degressive students will hard to compete with the aggresive students that take action by themselves and independent to do the task without helping.


Reference Link:

Corporate Blogging: A new marketing communication tool for companies

A corporate blogging is published and used by an organization to reach its organizational goals. The advantage of blogs is that posts and comments are easy to reach and follow due to centralized hosting and generally structured conversation threads. Currently, all major browsers (including Firefox, Opera, Safari and Internet Explorer) support RSS technology, which enables readers to easily read recent posts without actually visiting the blog, which is very useful for low-volume blogs.

According to research of NewPR Wiki, there was 61 (12.2%) of the Fortune 500 are blogging as of 04/17/09. One of the successful blogs is Amazon Web Services Blog by Amazon.com that about Amazon web services, products, tools and developer information. It helps to improve the communication and its customer services, attract more people to consume and discuss new products online.

Corporate blogging provides a clear mind map or editorial guidelines of overall marketing or communication strategy to its employees and third parties with organization communication plan and media mix. Besides that, it encourages employee participation in contribution of expertise, free discussion of issues or topics and deal with it, collective intelligence, be a direct communication between various layers of an organization and shares their views with others employees, teams or spokespersons publicly.

Furthermore, it can be used to announce new products and services, explain and clarify policies of the company and to react on public criticism on certain issues. Business blog can interact with a target market on a personal level by building a level of credibility and asking for their feedback on products and services.


Pros and Cons Of Corporate Blogs

The pros of corporate blogging is posts and comments are easy to reach and follow by employees due to centralized hosting and generally structured conversation threads. Besides that, it can be more accessible among the executives since the corporate blogging are an “unparalleled information gathering mechanism”.

Furthermore, a search able archive of thoughts and ideas can be created and jotting down within an hour through corporate blogging that cost more cheaper than other ways. Lastly, executives can receive the important information from employees and customers’ questions and feedback that will be permanently recorded on the blog and increases the efficiency while decreases the time wasted on needless e-mails.

However, corporate blogging might make it easy for defamation and invasion of privacy or to breach information security and loss of company confidentiality. (Wired News, 2005) Hence, this fear has stopped 22 percent of employees from writing a corporate blog. Besides that, it will create an expectation of updating the blog regularly and the time that taken in writing a blog will cause loss of $ 759 billion in productivity every year. Additionally, a new style of communication will be mastered since corporate blogging become popular in these recent years.

In conclusion, corporate blogging is getting important for corporation to deliver the message privately or publicly since it has brought many pros even thought the cons come along with it.

For the additional information, please refer those links:

1. The 5 types of Corporate Blogs

I was glad to read a recent post on Canada.com’s Gazette, which highlighted the 7 highly effective corporate blogging styles that exist today. So, rather than reinvent the wheel why not start with that post...

2. Do's and don'ts of corporate blogging

Know your audience, update your blog regularly, and cover your... rear. And don't expect a blog to turn around a failing company...

3.Fortune 500 Business Blogging Wiki

Welcome to this directory of Fortune 500 companies that have business blogs, defined as: active public blogs by company employees about the company and/or its products...
There are many ways to market your company on the web. Now we have another important alternative: the Corporate Blog. By David Meerman Scott...

5. Top corporate blogs and the reasons you should reading them

Lots of companies post uninteresting blogs - but not this crowd! Each of these companies has found a way to be a category killer and stand out.

Things to take note to prevent e-auction fraud when a consumer participating go an e-auction.


What is E-auction:
Auction is market mechanism by which buyers make bids and sellers place offers. It is characterized by the competitive and dynamic nature by which the final price is reached. Auctions can rapidly disposal of items that needs liquidation or a quick sale, they offer trading opportunities for both buyers and sellers that are not available in conventional channels and they ensure cautious execution of contracts.

The most popular type of auctions is an electronic auction (e-auctions) which means auctions conducted online. Nowadays many people joining in e-auction but they always do not know how to prevent e-auction fraud.

7 Ways to prevent E-auction fraud:

1. User identity verification such in IC number, driver’s license number or date of birth. For example, verified eBay user, the voluntary program, encourages users to supply eBay with information for online verification.

2. Authentication service. It is to determine whether an item is genuine and described appropriately. It difficult to perform because their training and experience, experts can detect counterfeits based on subtle detail.

3. Grading services which is a way to determine the physical condition of an item, such as ‘poor quality’ or ‘mint condition’. Different item have different grading systems. For example, trading cards are graded from A1 to F1, while coins are graded from poor to perfect uncirculated.

4. Feedback forum. It allows buyers and sellers to build up their online trading reputations. It provides user with ability to comment on their experiences with other.

5. Non-payment punishment. To protect sellers, a friendly warning for first-time nonpayment. A sterner warning is for second-time offense, with a 30 day suspension for a third offense and an indefinite suspension for a fourth offense.

6. Item verification which is a way of confirm he identity and evaluate the condition of an item. Third parties will evaluate and identify an item through a variety of means. For example, some collectors have their item “DNA tagged” for identification purpose. It provides a way of tracking an item if it charges ownership in future.

7. Physical inspection. It can eliminate many problems especially for collectors’ item.

Reference link:
http://www.wikipedia.org/