Online Education in Malaysia and the Impact of Cloud Technology
As Malaysian universities and other learning institutions aspire to maximize and globalize their online education, a series of questions need answering.
Malaysia Education Online (MEdO) is a Malaysian Government initiative aimed at transforming the process of international distance education. It is a pet project designated to make Malaysian institutions competitive in international education delivery.
Apart from the possibility to bring in extra revenue, MEdO is expected to modify the process of learning for both on-campus and long-distance students by integrating traditional and modern course content into Malaysian education, improving quality of education on both physical and virtual campuses.
The four main procedures for achieving the objectives of MEdO involve:
- Content development
- Content delivery
- Program aggregation
- Program management
Of utmost importance are the content development and delivery aspects of this process. Online education demands a sizable quantity of storage capacity to be functional. Malaysian institutions need to quickly provide easy and access to interactive videos, virtual academic chatrooms, teleconferences and digitized library and educational feedback procedures. Online students will require unrestricted access to on-demand educational technologies like videos, webinars and recorded lessons on CDs. However, this will be a capital-intensive project in the sense that new servers, networks and storage facilities are required to handle the increase in numbers of online students.
Cloud computing represents an efficient way to solve problems of unexpected surges in IT storage expenditure. Malaysia universities have a lot to gain by adopting cloud technology. Aside from cutting back on overheads, they can also enjoy flexibility, scalability, better speed and efficiency guaranteed by cloud.
Malaysian institutions can reduce IT budgets and concentrate on the quality of education they offer, whether locally or globally, through adoption of groundbreaking technology that will spur proactive online education.
Cloud-based features available to Malaysian online students include:
- Software as a Service (SaaS)— whereby online students can use some software/applications to achieve their educational goals but have no power to control the hardware, operating and networking systems;
- Platform as a Service (PaaS)— users can procure a hosting environment for their applications, but they are not allowed to control the hardware, operating system etc;
- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)— Malaysian online students can control the hardware, operating system and the networking system while using the storage facility, networking system and other principal computing services offered by the cloud computing firm.
Online Malaysian institutions should consider adopting cloud as an administrative strategy to raise institutional performance. Cloud also permits interoperability with other kinds of software/hardware, allowing online learning institutions in Malaysia to avail themselves of workability issues surrounding current hardware, networking system, servers and applications with the cloud technology. The security of cloud computing is also improving, making data protection scares a thing of the past.
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About the Guest Author:
Jerry Olasakinju, a Bachelor of Technology (B.Tech) degree holder, is a passionate researcher and writer whose interest in everything computing is unparalleled. He blogs about his literary works at http://jerryolasakinju.blogspot.jp/
