to establish a private university of reasonable size and repute, the perception is that there has to be a huge campus to attract students. such a perception requires a huge capital investment, an amount of which few private enterprises could afford. secondly, the capacity which is limited by the physical constraint, needs to be expanded again at considerable capital cost. thirdly, students have to be on or at least near the campus to be able to join the university. this naturally involves other incidental costs such as transport and lodging, apart from the high fees and expensive books. such a situation limits the number of students to only those who could afford. the socio-economic divide will perpetuate.

kub malaysia berhad, a public listed company that fully owns unitar, believes that most of the problems associated with the face-to-face teaching and learning could solve most if not all of the above problems. the main investment that it will have to make is not in brick and mortar but rather the information and communications technology infrastructure and the content development. students need to have a personal computer or laptop with internet access to “click with unitar”. the fees would be slightly reduced, lodging and transport costs could be minimal and the capacity could be increased manifold without much additional capital cost. this will not only allow more students to register but accelerates the rate of computer literacy and internet penetration in the country. unitar students should also be better knowledge workers than graduates of other universities who do not pursue computer or it related subjects. this is because, all unitar students will have to use the computer and internet in order to be able to facilitate their learning, irrespective of whatever courses they pursue.

3. e-learning academic model

when kub malaysia berhad mooted the idea, the first thing that came to mind was the right e-learning model to be adopted. this is indeed very crucial because of the rapidly changing ict that makes most of its equipment obsolete in very short time, requiring unnecessary high capital cost to update. the e-learning academic model required us to decide on a technology strategy that would not only reduce obsolescence cost but at the same time effective for the faculty to transfer knowledge to their students in a very friendly and accommodating fashion. the following issues have been taken into consideration:

access and level of technology adoption.

this includes determining factors such as computer and internet penetration and computer literacy level. we certainly had to decide where to locate our centres so that we could cater for the most number of students depending on the level of technology adoption and penetration. the ‘last-mile’ problem and novelty issue are relevant here when deliberating on the appropriate technology mix. for unitar, the offline/on-line categorisation has been used extensively to figure out the technology mix. we have the problem of narrow bandwidth, low computer literacy and low access to computers as barriers to implementation.

language proficiency

this factor will determine the medium of instruction or communication within the scope of teaching and learning activities. this affects type and configuration of content for the chosen educational setting. in malaysia, english is widely and favourably used, particularly in the urban areas, and has become a plus factor for our implementation. we certainly chose english to be our medium of instruction to cope with the knowledge and information advancement.

although the choice of english is not very attractive to the poorer section of society, we thought they would become better potential after four years of using the language in the university. after all, we could easily implement special intensive english programmes to overcome the problem.

cost

determining cost of building technological infrastructure is crucial as this is going to be translated into funding requirements. cost is also a factor of size of the market and the building of the market share. cost to students, in a private setting such as unitar, is also important to gain market share and revenue.

speed

the speed to which a technological application mix before or during implementation can be mounted is crucial to the success of any e-learning institution. for unitar, to establish a total on-line mode is not feasible at the time of its establishment due to low access and moderate level of adoption of technology.

institutional and national issues

implementation of any e-learning initiative needs to be tailored to conform to national agenda and legal requirements. education industry in malaysia is highly regulated to maintain high standards and hence unitar has to conform to education laws and policies which can rapidly changing too.

all these factors contribute to the implementation of an appropriate academic model conducive the malaysian setting. bearing in mind that the academic model is also evolving with the continuing advancement in technology and value shift in the society, unitar requires to continuously evolve its academic and business models too. in our experience we have five (5) main offline/on-line components in our e-learning academic model. they are:

courseware

we decided that the most important component of our academic model is the cd-based courseware as an offline component. because of the narrow bandwidth predicament, it is not possible to deliver lectures on-line at this moment. the level of current technology however, allows for lectures to be replaced by quality, interactive, multimedia-enriched courseware or content. a courseware in cd format can be sent to remote areas, and shared over a compatible pc. moreover, one can repeatedly review the cd-based courseware any number of times to enhance understanding. so, contents can be repeatedly communicated to students, with 100 percent uniformity, but it is impossible to repeat lectures in the same manner in conventional setting.

the downside of cd-based courseware is that it is rather expensive initially to produce. it also takes a much longer time to produce if compared to a normal lecture or other means of educational delivery. to counteract this shortcoming, we have developed web-based courseware, which can be viewed both on-line and offline using any popular browser. the development of web-based courseware is also faster, cheaper, easier to modify and update and more flexible than its cd-based predecessor. to date we have developed more than 300 titles all in 21 cd courseware and 15 web-based courseware for university level courses in-house and locally for the past three years.

course management system

our virtual on-line instructional support system (voiss) is the main course management system for students and instructors. the system contains more than ten different modules or functions, such as the on-line tutorial, forum, frequently-asked questions (faq), e-mail, bulletin board, announcement, assignment, quiz and examination. all modules, except the on-line tutorial (olt) fall under the category of asynchronous communication tool. the synchronous on-line tutorial is implemented rather cautiously due to network instability and narrow bandwidth even though most people tend to associate real-time, multimedia student-instructor interaction as defining the e-learning academic model. the voiss is currently on version 1 and is currently being enhanced as version 2.0

virtual library

the main library of unitar, meant to support the reference need of students, holds more electronic, on-line collection than in physical form. students can gain access to the library anywhere, anytime from any computer. this makes it possible for any registered student in any region to use one single source of library materials. the strength of the virtual library rests in its on-line database subscription such as proquest, eric, euromonitor and abi/inform global with more than 1000 titles accessible by all students in real time.

study centre

the study centre or regional centre is the place of congregation for students and instructors for their academic meetings and extra-curricular activities for personality development. like a campus, this also houses the basic facilities like classrooms, workstations, administrative offices, gymnasium, network operation centre, server farms, it shop, cyber café, library and basic recreation facilities. unitar has currently established eleven (11) such centres throughout the country, three of which are developed by unitar, and the rest have been developed in collaboration with other private educational institutions, thus reducing capital investment. study centres are located in major towns to reduce the travelling and accommodation needs of students. ideally a study centre need not have all the facilities of the main study centre which provides most of the ict facilities.

call centre

the round-the-clock call centre component is meant to support students facing academic, technical and personal problems. all enquiries through telephone calls, fax transmissions and e-mails will be answered by call centre personnel or directed to lecturers or officers in charge. all enquiries are recorded and checked for appropriate response and future follow-ups.

4. issues and challenges

apprehension in technology

it was rather intriguing for us to see parents sendingtheir children with suitcases and asks for the room keys of hostels for accommodation. parents and students still insist on a campus such as those of other universities and could not comprehend why they could study from the comfort of their own homes, especially if they live nearby one of the study centres. some are still worried about the lesser physical interaction they would have with instructors since they are still not confident of virtual interaction.

changing technology

as technology changes, unitar needs to review its technological status. upgrading of technology has to be continuous in order to be at the leading edge all the time. we can never be complacent with what we have.

competition with other providers of education

unitar has to face with stiffer competition as all the eleven (11) public universities have collaborated to form an open university claiming to offer programmes in the same mode as that of unitar at almost half the price. there are also a number of private universities working towards offering on-line education.

5. conclusion

after slightly more than two years in operation, we have managed to develop capabilities in developing an academic e-learning model that is operational and has attracted more than 4,200 students. our first batch of mba graduates will have their convocation/commencement in february 2001. the first batch of undergraduates should be graduating by the year 2002.

we also have developed capabilities to produce courseware of very high quality attracting clients such as sap ag of germany, johns hopkins medical faculty and others. we have also established a branch in cambodia, and are now in the midst of negotiations to establish partners in indonesia and philippines. we hope to be at the leading of e-learning in the region.