E-learning in Bangladesh

The use of technology in the field of education is becoming indispensable worldwide. The effectiveness of using e-learning tools in the classroom has been studied and proved time and time again.
Studies suggest that effective learning occurs when the senses are stimulated. By stimulating the senses, especially the visual sense, learning can be enhanced. It is further suggested that if multiple senses are stimulated, greater learning takes place. Stimulation through the senses is achieved through a greater variety of colours, volume levels, strong statements, facts presented visually, use of a variety of techniques and media. What better way to tingle multiple senses of a student than using technology, especially information technology?
Information technology is capable of capturing a student's attention through visual representation of concepts taught, sounds, moving pictures as well as interactive activities. A student may sleep through a lecture on the human digestive system. But if he can see visually how the digestive system works, actually see animations of the food moving through the body, listen to the relevant sounds and then do an interactive activity related to the topic, he will find it worth his interest.
As a corollary of information technology comes the internet a worldwide repository of interlinked information from a sea of sources. The use of technologies such as the internet as a teaching tool in schools is not the issue now since it is pervasively used. Rather, the issue is how to effectively employ such technologies and harness fully the new opportunities created by them to promote positive student learning experiences.
The internet basically provides three basic types of tools in the education domain tools for research, tools for communication and tools for construction.
In providing tools for construction, the internet promotes learning by scaffolding varieties of authentic learning activities for students.
Educational institutions today understand this and are already making use of this functional medium in various aspects of their day-to-day activities. From classroom teaching, assigning homework, assessing students and delivering results, technology, and more importantly the internet, is being embedded into the very core of the educational system.
In Bangladesh, however, the use of internet among students is limited to social networking and entertainment. The reason being, lack of appropriate content from the field of education and absence of research based activities and assignments from schools. Inquisitive students often feel lost in the humongous sea of information available on the internet. If they could find something that was close to their school syllabus, they could find it useful and relevant to them.
The Daily Star and Team Creative have jointly launched the country's first assessment website for school students called champs21.com to engage the Bangladeshi students in using the internet constructively and for education purposes. Russel T Ahmed, CEO of Team Creative says, "Our next generation -- our students will have to face the global competition eventually, since children of their generation in the developed countries are already using technology in their learning process. We need to prepare these students appropriately to face and come out successful in this competition."
Champs21 is a web-based assessment service for students from Classes 3 to 10 in mathematics and science. Students can take chapter-based and term-based tests throughout the whole session/year following school curriculum. The application scalability aims at drilling down conceptual comprehension as well as functional & relative clarity amongst students. This helps students to assess their strengths and weaknesses, decide which topics need more attention and track their progress.
More varieties of such interactive websites need to be initiated to cater to the needs of our Bangladeshi students, so that they can use the internet more constructively for their personal and holistic development.