3.3 ELECTRONIC EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES
In the present era, you can get access to a large number of electronic educational
resources through the web. These resources may be on different specialized areas.
These resources include the electronic journals, encyclopedias, dictionaries, digital
libraries, educational resource databases, indexing and abstracting databases and
electronic books. However, please note that some of these resources require paid
subscription. These resources allow you to browse through the abstracts, search on
various topics, and access the complete information for research in specific areas.
Some of these electronic resources are listed below:
E-Journals and Databases
ACM Digital Library
EBSCO database
IEL Online
JSTOR
Lawyers Collective Magazine
Lecture note in Mathematics
Maths Sci_net
Project Muse
ProQuest
Springer Link
Taylor and Francis
WTO E-library
Indexing and Abstracting Databases:
LISA J-Gate
E-Books
Credo References
Idea-Reference Resources
Net Library
WIKI
Wiki’s are a powerful tool for creating collaborative knowledge resources created by
the community. A wiki is a page or collection of Web pages designed to create and
edit contents. Wiki supports hyperlinks and has simple text syntax for creating new
pages. Wiki’s are also used to create websites, to enhance the features of community
websites and for knowledge management. The collaborative encyclopedia, Wikipedia
(www.wikipedia.com) is one of the best-known wiki’s. It contains very large number
of articles – all created and moderated by the community. Ward Cunningham
developed the first wiki software - WikiWikiWeb in 1995.
Characteristics of Wiki
A wiki invites all registered users to edit any page or to create new pages within
the wiki Website.
Wiki promotes meaningful topic associations between different pages by making
page link creation very easy.
Wiki promotes discussion and also keeps the history of changes of a document.
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| Figure 3.7: WIKI in Wikipedia |
You can write documents in a wiki using a markup language. You can see a wiki page
using web browser. Wiki pages are connected through hyperlinks. So in general, a
wiki is database for creating, editing, browsing, and searching through information.
Another example of wiki ( as stated in section 3.2) is Vedyadhara, also called the
IGNOU Open Course Guide (iocg) wiki. The figure 3.8 shows the home page of
Vedyadhara of IGNOU http://vedyadhara.ignou.ac.in/wiki/
Curriculum Design documents
Compilation of documents
Keeping daily records as well as personal information
Developing Learning Materials in a collaborative manner
Vedyadhara will provide following information about various courses:
Course Objective
Course concept map which links to learning module
Sequence of learning modules
Course support and counseling details.
Course calendar
Assignments are uploaded
Course evaluation approach
References, web references
Video lectures by IGNOU and other lecturers.
Instruction team and contact details.
It further plans to have prerequisite quiz for students to check that they have a basic
knowledge for taking up that course and feedback system given by students to the
course team.
Check Your Progress 1
1. What is eLearning? Compare e-Learning courses with traditional, on-campus
courses?
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2. How do e-Learning classes work?
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3. How is e-learning useful for Universities?
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4. What is wiki? How is it useful?
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5. What is MOODLE?
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