Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is a powerful tool in the field
of education. It has the power to transform learning by widening the learning
horizon and enabling students to learn anywhere, anytime and anyhow. Unlike traditional methods, e-learning creates a holistic and continuous leaning platform for organizations. e-Learning can be very effective in higher education for enhancing teaching and administration. It has the potential to provide access to digital versions of materials unavailable locally, interactive analytic or adaptive tutorials, personalized information and guidance to support learning. It can also provide simulations or modelling of hard-to-understand systems, tools for collaboration with other students and teachers, and above all virtual reality environments. However, e-learning faces several challenges and its effectiveness is degraded due to limited resources as well as high demand for resources. The paper, “Performance-Centric Cloud-Based e-Learning”, by Narayan A Joshi, presents issues in cloud-based e-learning solutions and suggests an architecture thereof to enhance efficiency and performance.

The Internet and World Wide Web have transformed the way we do business today. e-Commerce, as we know, is playing a very significant role in today’s society. It has deep impact on consumer attitudes, expectations and behavior. It provides several advantages over traditional commerce in terms of price, choice, convenience and information-rich decisions. e-Commerce has significantly improved the business processes in terms of customer interaction, personalization and satisfaction. As a result, e-commerce is growing rapidly worldwide. Further, technologies such as software agents and virtual reality have many potential benefits to offer which have resulted in a paradigm shift in e-commerce revolution. The paper, “e-Commerce and Its Structural Development in India: An Analysis”, by G V Chalam and K Siva Nageswara Rao, provides a comprehensive discussion on the genesis of e-commerce in India. Starting from the evolution of various electronic gadgets and communication infrastructures, it depicts the trends of the Internet usage and attempts to describe the structural development of e-commerce as well as applications of e-commerce in different areas of human life.

e-Governance is the use of ICT by various government agencies to reach out to its citizens to disseminate information and extend various services. It results in greater convenience, increased transparency, less corruption and freedom from red-tapism with reduced cost. It also facilitates interaction between various stakeholders in the form of G2G (Government to Government), G2C (Government to Citizen), G2B (Government to Business), and G2E (Government to Employee). The Government of India has formulated the National e-Governance Plan (NeGP) to extend benefits of e-governance to its rural masses through Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs). However, the policy faces severe challenges due to lack of participation and awareness among PRIs, bureaucrats and beneficiaries. The paper, “A Framework for Improving e-Services Utilization in Rural Areas”, by Puneet Kumar, Dharminder Kumar and Rajesh Sharma, proposes a framework for enhancing utilization of e-services in rural areas by reengineering the methodology adopted for capacity-building of PRIs and sensitization mechanism.

The paper, “Precursors to Electronic Word-of-Mouth: An Exploration of Factors That Influence Mobile Phone-Related Online Communication Behavior Among
University Students”, by Sumangla Rathore, Avinash Panwar and Jitendra Shreemali, examines if electronic word-of-mouth influences customers’ seeking further opinion on the product/service or their opinion leadership behavior with regard to the product/service. It finds that innovativeness and the Internet usage have a high positive impact on opinion leadership, while the Internet usage and online connection have a greater influence on opinion seeking.

-- A C Ojha
Consulting Editor