Learning New Language Through Online - Essay Example

1.0 Development the idea This part of the paper going to discuss how the idea of offering foreign languages online is developed , the analysis and design of an e-learning. Internet technology is inherently becoming inevitable when it comes to its massive benefits to online service providing. Though the primary actor in teaching is the teacher, the internet technology has provided a digital platform where authentic learning materials can be provided. These materials include education plans, software, revision materials, video demonstration and many other materials. In addition, the internet has facilitated e-learning, where students located in different places can takes their lessons online through teleconferencing. The business benefits that will occur due to offering the service online include lowering of the overhead cost. Human errors that are likely to be committed due to stress and fatigue decrease drastically. In addition, there is more accuracy and efficiency dealing with thing such as auditing, billing, and approval. The technology has become the order of the day to extend that the upcoming generations need to embrace it. This paper gives a detailed description on how students or people can learn foreign language via the internet. The paper also covers different aspect of analysis the suitability of the product. These include political, economic, social, technological, environmental and legal; also known as the PESTEL analysis. Audience-The target audience is both the education entrepreneurs and the technical team who participate in developing the websites that provide an e-course. Any individuals who have interest in embracing technology in the education sector may also find this report very interesting. The idea of providing online learning for foreign language online came about because I was recognised that the students who want to learn a new language undergo a lot of difficulties. This includes travelling involved and other technical problems. The prevalence of these problems triggered the idea of offering the service online. Another factor that triggered the idea of learning foreign language through the use of the Internet (website) is customer relationship management (CRM). In any online product or service provision, customer relationship management is critically vital (Ravi Kalakota, 2010). The way customers perceives the product on the have critical impacts on the business when it comes to customer management. The customer relationship management should be managing different user information such as contacts and responses. It is the only way of facilitating effective customer management. There are key elements of customer relationship management that are crucial in a website. The website should have utmost capabilities of attracting and retaining users. The company should try to identify strategies which will ensure that the clients or the users have adequate information on the functionality and the content of the website. To realise maximum utilization of the internet, the way the website is presented to the users must the good enough to attract the users. This is achieved by designing marketing strategy that best suite the nature of business. To effectively provide learning of foreign language online, different ideas are mapped and organized to come up with an effective service for clients. These include the required learning materials, the ability of the students or learners to interact fully using the system, the transfer of knowledge and assessment of the learners. The Mind Map was developed by Tony Buzan, and was a very effective way of developing the foreign language system. Below is the mind map which shows the initial ideas that were developing in helping to produce the project. Figure 1: Online learning language course Mind Map After critical analysis of the most suitable SCAMPER technique is rearrange, there are rearrange premier is the most suitable premier that can be implemented in this project. The E-course provision is a rearrangement where institution redesigns to its service provision methods by providing learning via the internet (Grefen, 2010). It involves provision of study materials and resources via the internet. The institution creates a database library where registered students log in to access the information. Service provision via the internet is critically challenging due to the changing technologies. Meeting the technological trends with the current education system is really difficult due to ever changing technologies. There is a broad cap between the emerging technologies and the current education system. Currently, there is an acute rise in how the education sector adapt to the emerging technologies. The technological advancement had a greatly impact on the education, scientific development, jobs political corporation and market. The internet has boosted disintermediation. With the internet, the process of disseminating learning materials is simplified. The internet enables the students to access learning materials from different geographical locations (Paul, 2008) as every individual in this world is facing the implication of the information. Below is the conversation map which shows the initial ideas that will improve the development of the Learning foreign language in the project. 2.0 Environmental factors’ analysis The external environment greatly affects the way business is conducted. Political environment- the change in the politics can have either positive or negative impact on the business of providing the learning of foreign language online. Example- the political stakeholders can pass the legislation that that all the courses offered should be conducted face to face. The issue can be dealt with if the politicians embrace the provision of courses online. Economic environment- the prevalent economic factor in the provision of the course online is the consumers’ confidence on the service provided. Being a new idea, the customers may doubt the credibility and quality of the course. The issue can be solved by creating awareness and convincing the consumers through evidence that the provision of the service online is by far better than face to face learning. Socio-cultural factors- the prominent Socio-cultural factors are the change in life style. Technology and innovation is greatly impacted by the change in the way people live. The provision of the course online will attract the consumers from the environment whose lifestyle has embraced the use of technology such as internet. Technological factors- this is the most critical environmental factor since the subject service is technological. The spread on the internet technology breakthrough is the basis of this kind of a service since without the internet technology in a place; the customers are not able to access the service. One environmental factor that has greatly impacted on business and service provision is changing technological environment. The best businesses currently are the ones which are able to adjust and fit to the new technology. The learning institution which adapt to the technological changes will realize massive development. The combination of technology and ideas are the basis of the invention that comes up every time. The innovators are quick enough to identify the powers and opportunities that come with the internet. There is a lot of potentiality that is in the internet and the businesses need to take advantage and exploit. The driving mechanism is the different technological ideas that people come up with and these ideas are supported by the internet. With the Web 2.0 capabilities, the education can be conducting via the internet the same way a student attends classes physically (Coleman, & Levine, 2008). One factor that is so significant and needs to be given consideration is the fact that the technology changes swiftly. The reason is that learning institution tries to outdo each other and in the process the teams in charge of invention and innovation come up with new technological ideas. A good example of this is teleconferencing where businesses currently advertise or market their product on the social blocks such as Facebook and twitter. The e-course learning strategies should be derived from already existing e-learning companies to give a suitable benchmark. As such it should be designed strategically to ensure that the goals and objectives of providing the service online are met. With the internet, the students need and the organization’s requirements can be optimized. Internet is a perfect tool of meeting the requirements of students from various races (Kalakota, 2010). It can also assist in eliminating situations where international students feel discriminated. The institution can gain a competitive advantage over the competitors when it provides its service over the internet. Companies which engage in online service provision have been experiencing a lot of difficulties as far as effective online tools are concerned. Producing accurate analyses is cumbersome and time consuming. In addition, the software used to carry out the process is often expensive yet it is prone to human errors. As such the whole process of analysis lies entirely on the models and technologies applied. Some leading technological companies such as Altometric have developed solution for these issues. The company applies state of the art web technologies that enable the data analysis companies to generate a complete report within 3 days. Their analytic environment applies web technologies web 2 are the advanced computing technology that the company can implement to achieve its business aims (Hippel, 2005). The technologies enable cost effective and seamless distribution of organizations computing resources. The new technology called cloud computing has brought about massive benefits to the business or companies that carry out businesses online. Any institution that has translated its business transaction to be web-based and has implemented cloud computing should ensure that the advantages that come with this technology is maximized. 3.0 Competitive forces’ analysis While the intention of this paper is to provide effective services to the clients, porter’s Five Forces should also be taken into consideration. Critical feasibility of the market to find out whether there is other similar websites which offer this course online. The effectiveness of such services provided by the competitors will also enable me to capitalize on the competitor’s weakness so as to provide a better service. Strategies on how to outdo the new entrants to the market is also critical as it will enable success. Rivalry amongst competitors- the rivalry in this sector is very little since it is a new technology. But with time, there will be an influx of competitors. This will warrant for service redesign or change of technology. The business will have to operate for some times since the initial cost invested is costly in case of an exit. Bargaining power of buyers- customer’s bargaining power becomes the most prevalent force in this project. Two strategies come into play in environmental factor analysis for this case; the (Porter, 2010) Threat of substitute products or services- the threat is also weak since it is a new product. With time the company will face stiff threats when other investor realize the benefit of offering courses online and there will be an influx Applying Porter’s Five Forces model, it was clear that the customer’s bargaining power become the most prevalent force in this project. The advantages that the company gains when it provides the learning on new language online shouldn’t be the first priority. It is the user satisfaction that matters more (Grefen, 2010). To achieve a competitive advantage the college needs to implement various strategies. University of Chicago department of languages is one of the universities that have achieved competitive advantage through offering learning of foreign languages online. Previously, the university has been facing is difficulties in ensuring that they are efficient in offering learning for foreign languages and also being able to outdo competing universities. Often, the teaching staffs were faced with the difficulty of both attending to the students within the campus and attending the training workshops that were demanded. The competition brought by the other universities that over the same services has been a key challenge to the university. Being the first learning institution to implement the iPad technology, the university can be the leading online foreign language provider that has simplified the work of the tutors enabling them to finish daily routine and also have adequate time to attend the trainings. In addition, the time that the staff could take sitting in front of a computer has been transferred to attending to the students therefore improving the learning services while making the students attention more personalized (Drucker, 2009) In addition, tutors who were previously teaching in different colleges in the remote places can make use of learning support software to disseminate the e-learning information support. This is facilitated by integrating the application of the system that keeps the student’s details in the iPad. The inbuilt scanner and webcams in the iPad can also be used to take a photograph of and provide video learning. This is called teleconferencing the implementation of such project can cut down on the time and cost of travelling by both lecturers and students. The problem has been put in place since the leaders in charge of profession at the centre recognised a method of increasing operational efficiency. The team decided to acquire over 100 tablet computers; specifically iPads during the last quarter of 2010. These tablet computers were meant to be used by the tutors and students who attend to the internal resident patients. The technology strives to eliminate the replication of of designation in the data analysis processes such as user data, sorting and analysis. With AaaS, the data protection, data governance and data security of the cleints data is quaranteed. For instance, the institution need not to employ many foreign language experts. All needed is a basic knowledge on how to use the internet tools and technique since the technology has integrated all advanced analysis techniques and methodologies. Security problems such as data and information privacy, consistency, compliance and security are well addressed in cloud analytic technologies. The cloud AaaS has a cloud view used in cloud management. The concept originated from the datawarehouse relational concept. The view gives an abstract of the physical schemas in the cloud reducing the area of exposure of the entire system (Grefen 2010). Every cloud view gives an abstract of each module that is needed while sharing cloud. The cloud view will be developed based on industry sandards to ensure that a logical infrustructure which does not require cloud based on the intranet. As a result of implementation of this technology, the rate at which work is done in the college has doubled. According to the principal, they have realized that by the end of each day, the tutors are able to complete the assigned task. This will create more time for them to give personal attention to the students. 4.0 Risk analysis Research shows that there are various risks that face learning a new language (foreign language) via online. The most prevalent risk is related to the security of information disseminated online. Threats that online information faces can be classified into two major categories. The first category is those threats related to propagation and spread of malicious programs to the website. These include: Vulnerabilities found on the homepage of HP System Management. MS08-067: Microsoft Windows Server Service Crafted RPC Request Handling Remote Code Vulnerabilities on Microsoft Windows SMB Remote Code Execution (958687) Apache Tomcat Manager Common Administrative Credentials Firebird Databases Server, server.exe Value Remote Overflow The ways in which these threats propagates can be looked at in details as follows Website Risk matrix Risk Risk score Probability Response to risk Action plan 1 Ineffective user requirement identification 1.6 30% Re-evaluation of the website requirement. Immediate review 2 Inadequate testing 1.2 30% Conduct a re-test Conduct initial website tests. 4 Real time test issues 1.4 22% The website should be exposed to the users again. Prototype retest 5 Lack of awareness on the user site 1.7 40% Conducting marketing campaigns such as posting the site on the social media Frequent checking of the traffic to the site 7 Sabotage from the competitors 1.8 15% Ensure that the user adhere to the user policy From the analysis of my findings, it is inherently evident that web-based security threats are increasing tremendously. It shows that there are several factors, other than virus attacks, which are critical, but not yet dealt with. Institutions also lack technological tools and financial resources to address these issues adequately. The most prevalent threats that affect the offering of services online were explored. Critical analysis shows that the most prevalent attack is caused by actions of human negligence and error. The increase in the use of mobile application software in online learning has also heighted the security risk to online data. The outcome of the research shows that the online learning information threats can be classified into two major categories. The first category is those threats related to propagation and spread of malicious programs to the learning information system. These include: Use of mobile devices Today’s society has been hit by massive uses of mobile devices. The types and the number of mobile devices used by tutors, students and administrators have drastically grown. The ability of users to access the information via the network expose the learning websites to network related security threats such as eaves dropping and denial of services. In addition, the software used by these devices is upgraded regularly. The software updates usually come with malicious programs such as operating systems, which can be detrimental to the information system. Threats associated with web based learning materials With the increase in the use of Smartphone and tablets computers with Wi-Fi and wide area network capabilities and embedded features such as a system for drop box support application and other applications used in learning, the bandwidth used in communicating is strained and hence exposes the information to network threats. References Berkun, S 2010 The myths of Innovation. OReilly Media, Inc. Briner, M., Kessler, O., Pfeiffer, Y., Wehner, T & Manser, T. 2010, Assessing 0nline risk management: development of a monitoring instrument, Cengage learning. Buzan, T.2006, Use your head. London, BBC active. Carlson, C R & William W W, 2006, Innovation: the five disciplines for creating what clients want. Crown Business, 2006. Canzer, B. 2006, E-Business:Strategic thinking and practice. Cengage Learning. Chesbrough, H W, 2006 Open innovation: the new imperative for creating and profiting from technology. Harvard Business. 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