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

E-learning has become more and more important in this era, being the alternatives ways of modern education. Basically, e-learning means teaching/learning experience that uses Internet or computer networks to reach learners. Lately in most local universities, e-learning is used in some course or subject of study where the students rarely attend face-to-face for on-campus access to educational facilities, because they study online.

However, there are still pros and cons out of the implementation of e-learning for students.

The Pros
From student’s perspectives, e-learning would benefits them in term of lower delivery cost. It enables the student to access to study resources via internet , thus reducing their needs to travel to campus. In the long run ,this indirectly help the students waived quite an amount of money for traveling expenses to campus. They can save on expenses of purchasing books as well because they can access teaching materials through e-libraries. Furthermore, e-learning help students to communicate with their tutors, get clarifications regarding their subjects and study.

Besides that, it provides time convenience and flexibility to students. Because of non-class attendance learning, most students are able to draw out one or two days more during their free week to return to their hometown and still able to enjoy the learning process without affecting their studies. Students can get online resources, communicate with his tutor or class mates, send his query and write term paper at any time he can get access to the Internet.

The Cons
However, there are still a few cons in e-learning. Students feel that lack of face-to-face communication with teachers contributes lack of understanding between a themselves and a teacher. Face-to-face interaction is till the best communication techniques for teaching/learning.

Because of non-supervisory from anybody , students turns out to be lazy being non-motivated enough and having free time schedule

for his e-learning. This may caused a low scope of the student’s knowledge and teacher’s accusation in lack of proficiency.

Most e-learning subjects or programmes doesn’t requires students to do any physical presentation of topic of study. This makes the students lack of knowledge of presentation skills that might be needed in real person face to face presentation in future.

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

In 1997,the Malaysia Government emerged with the electronic government to reinvent itself to lead the country into the Information Age. Implementation of electronic government started with the initiation of Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC) by the Malaysia government.

E-government enhances the convenience, accessibility and quality of interactions with public and businesses at large. It also improves the information flow and processes within the government, improve speed and quality of policy development, and improve coordianation and enforcement.This would enable the government to be more responsive to the needs of citizens.

E-government is one of the seven flagship applications introduced in MSC. The these flagships, seven main projects were identified to be the core of the e-government applications:

1. Project Monitoring System(PMS)
2. Human Rerouse System Information System(HRMIS)
3. General Office Environment( GOE )
4. Electronic Procurement (EP)
5. Electronic Services (E-Services)

6. Electronic Labor Exchange (ELX)7. E-Syariah

According to the survey done by Brown University on Rhode Island, US on international e-government ranking list, Malaysia has improved tremendously since 2005 and now is ranked 25th in the world. Meanwhile, there are several successful implementation of e-government in Malaysia which are :

(i) Government’s drive for e-government services

(ii) SMS alert on e-government services

(iii) Online renewal of driving licenses

(iv) Electronic filing of income tax forms

(v) Voter information

(vi) Details for government tenders

(vii) Employment opportunities

Government has sourced out several stragies to enable the citizens easier to adapt to current e-government applications.

1. The main concern here was the language barrier. In early stage of implementations of e-government, most of the services offered were only in national language which is in Bahasa Melayu (BM). This somehow caused residents & citizens whom were not really good in BM facing troubles using these services. Therefore now government is offering both English and BM version of web pages in their e-government services.

2. Besides that, large portion of citizens are not aware of the existence of e-government in Malaysia. In recent years, much advertisings can be seen in media to increase the awareness of public of these existing Malaysian E-government services .

3. Most of the web directory of e-government services is complicated. So it need to simplify the navigation of and search for information and online services through the provision of a single entry point. In other words simplify the procedures need to access to e-government services.

Corporate Blogging: A new marketing communication tool for companies.

Today, a shift is taking place in corporate communications. One that is promising to alter marketing strategies well into the future, which is corporate blogging. Corporate blogging is publish and used by organizations to reach its organizational goals through internal, external or CEOs blogging. Current browsers which are Opera, Firefox, Safari and Internet Explorer 8 which supports RSS technology enables reader to browse recent posts easily without actually visiting the blogspot.

Marketing has always been about balancing company interest with customer interest, but know it is becoming more about opening dialogue and building trust. Through corporate blogging, company can indirectly fine-tune their marketing messages through social interactions. Blogging enables faster feedback and a more strategic understanding of where the market is heading.

From a competitive standpoint, blogging demonstrates to customers that a company cares about its products and customers. Building a relationship with customers is all about loyalty and transparency. Customers are more inclined to deal with an organization that they think they know the best. This is where blogs come into the picture. Through blogging, an organization can build its relationship with its customers and promote their products at the same time.

The 2 most common corporate blogging is internal blogging and external blogging:

(i) Internal Blogging
Internal blogging is to capitalize on the opportunity to encourage communications and knowledge flow upwards in the organization. Basically it can be accessed by all of the corporate employee throught the corporate’s intranet. Internal blogs may be used in lieu of meetings and e-mail discussions, and can be especially useful when the people involved are in different locations, or have conflicting schedules. Blogs may also allow individuals who otherwise would not have been aware of or invited to participate in a discussion to contribute their expertise.

(ii) External Blogging
An external blog is a publicly available weblog where company employees, teams, or spokespersons share their views. It is often used to announce new products and services to explain and clarify policies, or to react on public criticism on certain issues. It also allows a window to the company culture and is often treated more informally than traditional press releases, though a corporate blog often tries to accomplish similar goals as press releases do.

A corporate blog if is not properly managed and maintained,can turn from cool to catastrophic. Despite the ever blooming of corporate blogging, there are still pros and cons of it.

The Pros:
Ø Requires strong written communication skills
Ø Easy to set up a company blog.
Ø Appeals to younger consumer groups and employees
Ø Dialogue with consumers
Ø Search engine visibility
Ø Requires little budget input

The Cons:
Ø Is time-consuming to maintain
Ø Requires strong written communication skills
Ø Blogs are so popular that their credibility as a source of information is declining.
Ø Lack of control vs. over-moderation.
Ø Legal minefield, privacy concerns
Ø Hard to measure ROI

Review a local, transactional e-commerce site

Blooming Florist Sn Bhd is an established company that specializing in florist and souvenirs. It starts its business in year 1981 and is managed by May and Martin Cheah. This website not even selling flowers, but also cakes, wines, hand bouquet and so on. Blooming Florist Sdn Bhd has grown from a small retail shop to its present set-up of five retail outlets in Petaling Jaya, Kuala Lumpur and a head office/ workshop cum retail outlet in Kelana Jaya in this few years. Nowadays, Blooming Florist Sdn Bhd is linked with most reliable florists throughout Malaysia. Besides, it also networked more 100,000 florists worldwide through its membership in Interflora Pacific unit Limited. Blooming Florist Sdn Bhd has been operated for many years in the market. It has won for many awards for their quality products, good services, instant delivery and etc.

The services that provided by Blooming Florist Sdn Bhd to their customers:

(1) Delivery service
Blooming.com provides the following delivery services to their customers:

(i) Same-Day and Next Day Delivery in PJ/KL, and throughout
Malaysia.
(ii) Requests for MORNING OR AFTERNOON delivery
(iii) Peak Floral Delivery days
(iv) Sundays and Public Holidays

(v) International Orders

(vi) Order For Wreaths/Sympathy Flowers

(2) Online Payment

Customers can pay their Blooming.com.my purchases in various way:
(i) Online credit card payment by VISA or Masteercard
(ii) Online Banking such as Maybank2u.com, RHH e-banking and etc.
(iii)Pay using Kawanku ATM
(iv)Open bill payment via Maybank2u.com, Public Bank and etc.
(v) Cash payment- by paying cash at Blooming’s outlets.

(3) Outside Malaysia services

All products shown in the website are for deliveries within

Malaysia. For the delivery service outside of Malaysia, our
fulfillment is carried out through Interflora. All International
Deliveries are done through Interflora. Interflora is a network of Florist whose membership now exceeds 75,000. Blooming.com.my is a Member of Interflora. This enables flowers to be delivered worldwide by Reliable Member Florist located all over the world.