NetVarsity, the online learning portal by NIIT opened on May 22, has received an overwhelming response from users, recording a new high on all parameters like page views, registered users, concurrent users and usage time every day, said Rajendra S Pawar, chairman, NIIT.
The portal is aiming for a user base of half a million in the next 12 months. "We are overwhelmed by the visitor response. We recorded 100,000 page views on day four itself," said Pawar. The number of surfers seeking to enhance their skills over the NetVarsity has been on the rise with the visitors spending much longer duration with every passing day, he said. The surfers have taken a fancy to the free courses that the company offers which is the most frequently used facility on the NetVarsity followed by course details and the contact information about the NIIT centres.
"We found that on days when the NetVarsity clocked over 1000 concurrent users the server slowed down. Our teams have been working round-the-clock to increase server capacity and outsource additional bandwidth so as to reduce download time. We are confident of significantly enhancing the accessibility," said Dr Smarajit Dey, head of NIIT's eastern India operations. Dr Dey is part of the NetVarsity strategy team.
The launch of Netvarsity.com is NIIT's initiative to e-nable its education business. It allows the company to offer its benchmarked learning in any part of the world, which has an Internet connection.
"A cornerstone of our brick and portal strategy, NetVarsity will not only function as a separate domain but would also positively reinforce our brick and mortar centres, thus transforming the education business by combining the power of instructor-led training with Internet-based training," Pawar said.
"NIIT has unique strengths in instructional design and content development. Our experience of having trained a million learners and our ground presence in 1634 locations is unmatched. In that sense we are well poised to capture a major share of the IT learning space," Dr Dey added.
Web-based training is expected to enjoy an explosive growth of 95 per cent per annum for the next few years. For the US market alone, International Data Corporation has estimated the size of online learning to be $2 billion. It is projected to grow to $5.5 billion by 2002.
The technological changes in today's environment are so fast and dramatic that learning can no longer be in chunks, but has to be a continuous process, thus forcing people to look at accessible and flexible ways of learning.
