Apex forum on Virtual Education (e-learning) was organized at Pune Centre on April 5, 2003 as part of the Golden Jubilee Year celebrations. Shri P.N.Chopra, Chairman (ICC), briefly introduced the subject of virtual education. Prof Aggarwal said that e-learning is essential to make good the shortfall in the required number of seats in formal educational institutions for ever increasing number of students. He said e-learning will also help in improving the quality of higher education as well as to enable self study by especially those students taking distance education courses. Shri R.K.Arora, Executive Director of C-DAC, delivered the key-note address. He touched upon a number of issues and deliberated on the advantages of e-learning such as accessibility of lessons from best teachers by a large number of students, possibility of studies at convenient time and at a speed suiting individual capabilities, freedom to clear doubts during class room learning, instant examination & evaluation being mechanized, free from subjective factors and enabling students to know their mistakes.

Prof. Ram Takawale, in his speech came out very strongly in support of e-learning. He dismantled many arguments usually raised against the e-learning. He said that today the situation exists for launch of e-education since formal educational institutions are not able to meet the requirement of ever increasing admission seekers. Today we have all means such as Internet, broadband, WLL for rural communications, education channel in satellite, people to create quality content and technology to take it where ever and who so ever requires it.

The panel discussion was chaired by Prof. Pramod Kale. Three brief presentations were made in order to inform the participants about some new developments in e-learning. Shri Sasikumar of NCST (C-DAC) Mumbai spoke on “e-learning Present & Future”, Shri Zia Saquib of C-DAC, Pune on “e-vidhyapeeth” (a software for enabling e-learning) and Shri Sandeep Bhargava of World Space, Bangalore spoke on “Tools for e-learning”. The forum was attended by about 70 persons, including experts, educationists, students, IETE council members etc. It concluded with an optimistic note, favouring introduction of e-learning.