A discussion on E-learning offered in Malaysian universities: Pros and Cons from the students perspective

Pros
Reduced overall cost is the single most influential factor in adopting e-learning. It is because it can eliminate the rental, lodging, meals and travel costs of students are directly quantifiable. Furthermore, all those traditional pleasantries in the classroom setting are eliminated. Hence, it reduces the cost of the course and students time away from work.

As a student, you can choose what, when and where you want to learn. Hence, you can learn when you need it and your learning options are not constrained by your geographic location. Also, you are not constrained by the arrangements made by traditional timetables, schedules curricula. Therefore, learning can be fit into your busy schedule or you can have a job while you take classes.

You can learn at your own pace. No lecturers or tutors are controlling your work on the spot. Your learning is stress free and enjoyable. Thus, can be more effective for certain types of students, such as shy, reflective, language challenged those that need more time.

Distance learning gives equal chances for all students irrespective of their background and status. Besides, the internet is a provider of diverse learning styles and authentic materials which facilitate the process of learning. On the other hand, it also provides side benefits of learning new technologies and technical skills.



Cons
E-learning can entail significant investment in IT hardware and software if your University is not yet appropriately equipped as well as the students, especially for those poor and do not have computers. For examples, you will need an internet connection, an appropriately equipped PC, sound cards, headphones, and web cams at the least.

Not all regions have constant access to the internet. There are still parts of the world where state of the art technology is non-existent. Also, it requires technical training and support of students as well as the lecturers and tutors. Besides, cultural acceptance is an issue in university where students may tend to against learning by using computers at all.

Reduced social and cultural interaction can be a drawback. As a student, you can become bored with individual work. It is lack of face to face interaction and campus life. Interaction with classmates face to face helps in establishing better social relations. It does not provide many social aspects of a true campus or traditional classroom. Also, spending endless hours looking at the screen can damage your eyesight.

Not everything can be found on the internet, especially books, which are recommended by the lecturers or tutors. Also, it is difficult for lecturers to move traditional content online. Besides, more time consuming for lecturers or tutors to provide individualized feedback because more students are often actively involved. Hence, students may require an effective online lecturers and tutors.


Related Links:
http://www.elearners.com/resources/elearning-faq5.asp
http://writingandsnacks.blogspot.com/2006/08/pros-and-cons-of-e-learning.html
http://www.justcolleges.com/elearn/proscons.htm
http://www.sameshow.com/blog/2008/04/18/referral-the-pros-and-cons-of-e-learning.html

Review a local e-commerce site

There are many popular ecommerce sites around the world. In Malaysia, we have the biggest stimulator of ecommerce site, which is Air Asia. Air Asia started with the sales of air ticket through internet, and until now, air ticket is the top item Malaysians are buying online so far.

Air Asia is a flight company, therefore the top item in their online shop is air ticket. Many people travel around the world from Malaysia purchase air ticket through online. The main factor behind is because buying air ticket online can have discounted price especially during the promotion seasons. Moreover, customers from other countries such as Thailand and Indonesia can purchase the air ticket since internet provides a lot of convenience throughout the world. Besides that, travel accessories such as travel chest set, Air Asia T-shirt, and teddy bear are offered by Air Asia as souvenir for foreign passengers.

When travelers intend to purchase air ticket online, Air Asia also provides post-sale services for them. For example, services such as booking meal to be served on board, and luggage bag carrying services are provided by Air Asia to provide the best environment for their customers. Other than booking air tickets online, passengers can also book hotels and airbus tickets online through Air Asia website. This is to increase the satisfaction of customers since they do not have to worry about the accommodation and transportation before and after their journey especially in foreign countries.

On the other hand, Air Asia encourages their customers to open up a CIMB bank account and pay the fees using CIMB credit card. By doing so, their customers can obtain a free gift from Air Asia company. Other than CIMB bank, Air Asia provides alternatives to other bank account owner. For instance, if customers pay their airfares by using Air Asia Citibank gold card or Citibank credit card, they can obtain several benefits which include E-gift voucher, free travel insurance and others. The main target customers of Air Asia are business men. Therefore, Air Asia also provides advertising board for business men who intend to advertise their products and services either at the airport, or on flight.

Next, to enhance consumer awareness about Air Asia, they remain consistency in the choice of colors of their website, which are red and white. This can help consumers to recognize their website once they access into the webpage. To provide convenience to their customers, Air Asia uses consistent layout for their webpage design. The search engine at the left of the webpage enables customers from different location to search for the departure and arrival time, dates, and location. Dates choices are last for 10 months, which enable passengers to book for their air tickets earlier to obtain better discount. Besides that, location selection is arranged based on alphabetical order which range from Australia to Vietnam. To view different type of services provided by Air Asia, webpage visitor can refer to the top of the webpage for references. On the other hand, Air Asia also provides guidelines for unfamiliar users which located at the bottom at the website. When customers intend to buy air tickets online, they can choose the location, time and dates from the search engine. After they selected their particulars, the total amount payable will be stated at right side, before the buyers make their decision. To confirm the purchase, they have to enter their credit card information, followed by their personal details. The shopping carts are then confirmed from the website and a confirmation invoice will be sent to the customers’ email address.

Due to the features provided by Air Asia, it is believe that more and more people will start using online purchase of air tickets. The website provides a lot of convenience to customers especially for those who always travel from one country to another.

Related link:

http://www.airasia.com/site/my/en/home.jsp

Corporate Blogging: A new marketing communication tool for campanies

Nowadays, blogs have become a popular communication tools on the Web. The main reason is blog provides a forum for individuals to create their own presentation on the Web to the Web audience. Pyra Labs Blogger stated that "A blog is a web page made up of usually short, frequently updated posts that are arranged chronologically-like what’s new page or a journal."Moreover, blogs have involved in the corporate sector as well which is known as “Corporate Blogging”. A company can use the corporate blogging as a communication tool to accomplish business objective. Corporate blogging can help company to get more comments or opinions of customers in the world. If the corporate blog gains popularity, it means that the company could have thousands of people subscribing to the feeds. Based on a market research, 34% of large companies had established weblogs in the first half of year 2006. Another 35% of the large companies planned to create a blog by the end of year 2006. It shows that the corporate blogging plays a vital role in the company’s business strategy.

A company can gain many benefits through corporate blogging. Firstly, the blog create a new opportunity to communicate with new potential customers. It is because the new potential customers may have a chance to know the company through the corporate blog. Secondly, blog is easy to use and easy to update because many blog software companies provide easy blogging tools to get started such as Blogger.com. Lastly, it can be used as an effective marketing communication tools for the companies. For example, when a company launched a new product, it may publish the information to the corporate blog in order to promote it. The company can have a open dialog with the customers. It also can build a community of people who are interested to the company’s product. According to Steve Rubel, corporate blog can be used as a business strategy for a company.

Although the corporate blogging brings a lot of advantages to the company, there are some significant disadvantages of corporate blogging. There are dozens of cases of workers warned or fired due to the “free speech” they wrote on the companies’ blog. In a survey of Proofpoint, more than 57% of executives among the 332 large companies were treated corporate blog as a source of trouble for their companies. Furthermore, blogs are easy to start but difficult to maintain. It is a time-consuming task for employee to update the blog frequently or write coherently. The blog that is not updated might cause damaging rather than enhancing the reputation of the company.

The example of corporate blog will be given is Gizmodo. It is dedicated to gadgets, gizmos, and cutting-edge consumer electronics. Besides, It is a web magazine which is quickly building a specialized audience in consumer electronics by an advertising business model. In the mid-2004, Gizmodo and Gawker were generated revenue of $6,000 per month through the corporate blog.


Related links:
http://www.blogtips.org/does-your-non-profit-organisation-need-a-blog/
http://sbinformation.about.com/cs/ecommerce/a/bblogs.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_blog
http://www.businessknowhow.com/internet/corporate-blog.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Rubel
http://www.enterpriseblogs.info/corporate-blogging/disadvantages
http://apins.wordpress.com/2009/03/23/advertising-marketing-and-blogging/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gizmodo
http://gizmodo.com/

E-Government in Malaysia: Its implementation so far and citizen’s adoption strategies

Introduction
In recent new economy, most of the countries are trying to change their government services into electronic form which is called Electronic Government (E-Government). E-government has been widely adopted by many countries such as Singapore, Dubai, Taiwan, Korea and including Malaysia. In Malaysia, the adoption of e-government started since the initiation of MSC (Multimedia Super Corridor) by Malaysian government. Essentially, e-government is sought to provide effective services to the citizens. However, there are low in percentage of Malaysia citizens using e-government services.

E-government application in Malaysia
Basically, e-government application can be divided into two types. One of the e-government applications is called e-government flagship. Under e-government flagship, there is a series of applications such as Project Monitoring System, Human Resource Management information System, Generic Office Environment, Electronic Procurement, Electronic Services, Electronic Labour Exchange and E-Syariah. Mycard is one of the products that have been provided by the government to enhance the services to the customers. Actually, Mycard provides several applications for example national ID, driving license, passport information, health information, Touch N Go and MBPS cash. Another type of e-government applications is agency-led projects. Some of the examples of agency-led projects are E-Tanah, E-courts, E-perolehan and others. E-Tanah is use to protect land owner right from being cheated during the transfer of ownership is made.

Problems encountered by consumer
One of the problems which has been faced is due to the lack of awareness. Most of the users are not aware the applications offered. Another problem encountered by the consumers is online behavior. Some of the consumers are seldom make the transaction online. They probably pay the bill to the office of the relevant company. Moreover, language barrier also is one of the troubles that confront with the consumer. This is because most of the website right now is using English version rather than Bahasa Malayu version.

Way to encourage citizens to use e-government application
Increase awareness
In order to increase the awareness of user, the government can develop marketing campaigns such as TV advertisement, media relation and so on.

Gather feedback
Gather feedback from the consumers can build e-government services. Such as Dubai e-government has provided campaigns to attract users of its e-services. For any citizens who fill the online feedback is entitled to win various prizes. Thus, it enables the government to create a convenient user friendly channel.

Leadership skill
Leadership skill can provide a power to influence the citizens to change their manual services into electronic services. Government can be a leader to guide the citizens to adopt with the new culture of the country. It can be a best way to encourage the consumer to migrate in to electronic services.

Related Links:

http://www1.american.edu/initeb/ym6974a/egovernment.htm#Quick%20Links
http://www.egovonline.net/interview/interview-details.asp?interviewid=70
http://ecommerze.blogspot.com/2007/11/e-government-malaysia-is-now-ranked.html
http://www.intanbk.intan.my/psimr/articles/Article1%20-%20Full.pdf
http://www2.state.id.us/ITRMC/events/bootcamp/2002/fraser_slides.pdf
http://business.maktoob.com/20050427144708/ArticleAnnouncement.htm

http://www.bernama.com/kpdnhep/news.php?id=303192%E2%8C%A9=en

A review on a post on e-tailing from My E-Commerce blog.

Based on a review on a post of “Digital music sales increase 50%” from My E-Commerce blog, the sales of digital music increase by 50% while the sales of physical album has decreased by 15% as compared to prior year.

Technology improvement has been rapid nowadays, and internet provides several conveniences to consumers. Therefore, consumers will rather shift to online purchase as compared to physically going to the retail shop to buy the products. One example is music. Purchasing a whole physical album from retailers may be costly as compared to digital music online. Moreover, consumers have increase the usage of portable digital products such as iPod and MP3 player has increased their motivation to purchase music online since they do not have to convert into the playable format in the portable devices.

There are several e-tailers available in the market, such as Amazon.com and eBay. These online sellers encourage consumers to purchase legal digital music from their websites. However, there are several disadvantages when consumers shift from physical album to digital music. One of the drawbacks is the illegal download of music. Illegal downloads exclude consumers from paying and they can simply click on the link to download the intended music from some websites.

Next, there are some risks when consumers search for music online. For instance, they might be exposed to the threat of viruses when they access to unknown websites hoping to download free music from the unsecured address. On the other hand, purchasing physical album will not cause this problem. However, most of the consumers will rather be risk taker when buying music since the original album may be costly. Also, some music lovers only prefer single song from an album. Therefore, they will choose to purchase singles from internet instead of buying the album as a whole.

As a conclusion, although there are several conveniences purchasing music online, consumers shall access to legal website when they choose to buy from e-tailers. Entering into illegal websites may cause some risks to consumers as compared to purchasing physical album from retail shops. To compete with e-tailers, retail shop owners can promote their products by giving out free gifts along with the album, as this advantage cannot be obtained from online purchasing.

Related link:

http://ecommerze.blogspot.com/search/label/e-Tailing

Mobile payment systems in Malaysia: Its potentials and consumers’ adoption strategies.

Mobile payment system is a new alternative payment system which allowed the consumer to do payment by using mobile phone. It is a secure and convenient way to transfer the money electronically at anytime and everywhere. Moreover, mobile payment system let the customers to pay for any services such as transportation fare, books, magazines and even the digital goods such as music, ringtones.

Mobile payment has been adopted by many countries such as Singapore, Australia, and Malaysia. One of the company which has been adopted the mobile payment system in Malaysia is Mobile Money International Sdn Bhd. However, user is required to download the “mobile money ATM” in order to create an effective mobile payment. Mobile money ATM is an application that uses in the mobile phone and helps the user to transfer money to an appropriate person. By using this application, user can pay their bills, bank, and friends, reload prepaid, pay merchants, and remit money. As a result, it helps to make the user’s life more easily.

At this point of time, most of the consumers are more preferred to use cash money rather than mobile money. In order to encourage the consumers to adopt this payment system, awareness of the consumers is one of the important elements. The government should try to introduce the usefulness and way to use the system. This is because most of the consumers have zero knowledge with the mobile payment system. Furthermore, we should improve the security of the mobile payment system in order to prevent any fraud which will be possibly occurred. Others than that, supporting regulatory and legal framework should be provided toward the payment system in order to improve the reliance of consumers. As a consequence, it will increase the trust and confident of the consumers toward the system. Other than that, the infrastructure of the payment should be widened. It will make the consumers to be more convenience in assessing to the system.



Related links:
http://www.liewcf.com/blog/archives/2007/05/m-money-by-maxis-and-maybank/

http://www.mobile-money.com

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_payment

http://www.bis.org/review/r080605d.pdf

Credit Card Debts: Causes and Prevention

Financial illiteracy
Many people get their first credit card as soon as they are allowed to. They don't understand how money works and grows, how to save and invest for a rainy day, especially teenagers or sometimes even younger. The schools don't teach about it, parents also seldom ask you sit down and explained about it. Many teenagers treat credit cards as "free money" and buy anything that they want without showing any concern of how they are actually going to pay for it.
Prevention:
You are responsible for your life and your money anyway. Get educated and get in control. You will be surprised at how powerful you'll feel when you are making thoughtful decisions about where and when to spend your money.


Emergence of online shopping
Online shopping is become more friendly and convenient to the user. Whenever the users have possessed a credit card, they can just buy the things through online and treat credit card as a useful leaner wallet. This will result in overspending while surfing on those online shopping website. Furthermore, if you are involve in gambling websites. It can be addictive, hard to stop and loans are freely available by using credit card.
Prevention:
Do you really require such a high credit limit on your card? Know your limits and you will automatically spend less. Keep a running tally in writing of your weekly or monthly spending versus you budget, and update it before each purchase. This will help you to eliminate the risk that you overspend during the month.


Lifestyle maintenance
Expensive cars, luxury houses and etc are the big expense along the way. They treat credit card as money from windfall. Furthermore, spending tomorrow's money today is very tempting, especially if you believe that tomorrow will come no matter what. Therefore, people may then rely on credit card to get by.
Prevention:
It is important to communicate with your spouse or significant other and your children about finances. Keep the lines of communication open and discuss financial goals and spending styles. Spending less than you make is what's important.


Encouragement of credit card companies
Even the credit cards have encouraged you to spend money with no worries wherever you go, but the credit card companies have always sent the advertising to assaults you. Credit card companies often tell us that spend more earn more because of the rewards and privileges provided by them. These things are often hamper our ability to save our money.
Prevention:
Actually, spend more earn more doesn’t make sense because spend more sure lose more money that you have, right? Therefore, cut up your cards so that you are not tempted to use them. Save one card for emergencies. Lastly, remember to pay your credit card statement due on time.


Related links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_card
http://www.bankrate.com/brm/news/debt/debt_manage_2004/top-10-causes.asp
http://www.mozdex.com/prevent-credit-card-debt/
http://www.indiastudychannel.com/resources/53476-Credit-Card-Debt-Prevention.aspx