Mr. Anil Kumar, an e-learning professional with rich, 10+ years of experience in design and development of both corporate and academic e-learning programs, explained his views and experience when he was working with a reputed university on my request.

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how e-learning benefits KFUPM and its students

during the last 4 years, i worked as the project manager of a large, e-learning design and development project at the prestigious King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, based in the eastern province of Saudi Arabia. it is a polytechnic, engineering university with over 10,000 students enrolled in various undergraduate and graduate courses.

typically, a university faculty member teaches using course material - part developed by him as lecture presentations and notes, and part comprising excerpts from textbooks, online videos and websites related to the subject. this set of course material was shared with us to be put together into e-learning courses. we followed the popular ADDIE methodology and developed courses with animations, interactivities, and assessments. every course was divided into a few modules which consisted of a few lessons. once courses were developed, they were reviewed and approved by the faculty members.

The foremost benefit of embracing e-learning, as you must have guessed is that the students could use the courses anytime, anywhere, and at their own pace. additionally, in the courses, they could see static diagrams from textbooks come alive as animations, and in some cases, they could interact with the animations to alter certain properties, and see their effects. for example, to understand the Charles law (a gas law), students could increase temperature and see how the volume of a gas expands proportionately in a interactive animation. at the end of every lesson, some questions were presented, answering which ensured the successful achievement of the learning outcomes.

every lesson in every course was developed as a stand-alone learning object. this allowed re-use of lessons which were common across multiple courses - without the need for their separate development. the courses were hosted on a learning management system that allowed the faculty to check every student's progress and time spent in the courses, assessment reports and grade them instantly. and once developed, the courses could be used over and over again with the consistency in learning. and they could also be modified easily - as desired by the faculty. this resulted in immense cost savings for the university. and importantly, through us, the faculty of the university also gained knowledge and skill to create their own e-learning courses - something that every faculty in the information era should be able to do.