Virtual Courses

A friend told Ali about the Virtual university. Ali tried to get admission in the university of Karachi’s mass communications program but failed due to his own mistakes. He thought that, may be it would be easier to get in the VU, as there will be more seats and less competition.

Ali came home, opened his computer and typed the VU’s URL in the address bar. Of course poor Ali was behind a cable network and VU’s Webmaster was probably using some MB per second Internet connection. It took nearly two minutes to get fully loaded and then a popup window appeared. Ali was not expecting one as he was visiting an educational website and he thought that there wouldn’t be ads on this website. Both pages were loaded and now Ali had two pages to look at. At first he looked at the main page, which was actually a set of four different pages, more than twenty images and a flash movie. This set of pages also had a page with two paragraphs about VU. Ali liked the design, which was really an impressive one. The Webmaster worked hard to produce curves and shapes and to assure the visitors that they are visiting a website of International standards. But after putting so much pressure on design and assuring visitors, there was no space left to put an announcement about the admissions. So the announcement appeared in the popup window. This page in the popup window was actually a flash movie to tell the visitors that the university is receiving applications for the fall semester.

Ali was then taken to another page, which appeared in another new browser window. This page really had something, which could be called information. But Ali already knew what ever he found there. This page had a list of programs offered, admissions criteria, eligibility and other basic things. Ali wanted to know more about the mass communications program. He wanted to know the course contents and fees etc. But there was no such link available. Ali then clicked on a link to download the VU’s prospectus in PDF format. After downloading the PDF file Ali had to download the adobe acrobat reader to read this file.

After spending more than an hour Ali finally became able to read this file. He opened it in acrobat reader and started browsing through the different pages. This prospectus had 31 pages, 16 of these pages were lists of private sector partners of the university, four pages were about the university it self, one about staff, one had table of contents and only 7 pages had some really useful content. But again these pages had the same information that Ali found at the website. There were no details available about Mass communications program or any other program. The only details available were about BS in IT and again BS in IT fast track. Then Ali jumped back to the website and clicked randomly on each and every link and it was easy to realize that this website has no content except a few demos and some other not so useful information. Ali thought that if it is so easy for me to realize that this is not a good website then how the vice chancellor of an IT university failed to realize the fact? This was enough digging for Ali for one night so he decided to visit the nearest virtual campus in the morning to buy admission forms, prospectus and to gather some information about the programs offered.

The next day Ali hired a rikshaw and reached to the nearest virtual campus it is a famous private computer education provider evenrone who reads Sunday editions of the News and Jung must be familiar with the name “Noor college of professional education and Information technology”. Ali looked at the very impressive (a palace like) building of the institute. There were few gun men sitting at the gate, Ali entered inside the building and looked around. He found a glass door with “Information” printed on it. Ali entered the Information room and he was in heaven. This room was air conditioned and was expensively decorated. There was a girl sitting behind the information desk. She didn’t notice Ali looking at her and she kept feeding data into the computer. Ali reached to the girl and said. “Ji, mujhay virtual university ka prospectus chahyay” (I am looking for virtual university’s prospectus). The girl looked at Ali and even though Ali asked her in Urdu she replied in English. She kept talking for a few seconds and then stopped. She was looking at Ali now and Ali didn’t get a single word of whatever she said. He felt so embarrassed but suddenly the girl started repeating the same message in an understandable version of Minglish. She told Ali that the Noor college is affiliated but this semester they are not enrolling or providing assistance to those seeking admissions in fall 2003. Ali asked the girl if she know any other Virtual campus around she said that Ali should visit virtual university’s website for a list of private campuses. Ali thought that well I got your institutes address from the same list you are talking about and here you are so does this mean that not all the virtual campuses are offering admission forms and assistance?

Ali left the building and decided to check the list again and this time he decided to call the private campuses before visiting them. Ali spent more than two days and he is still unable to find out the course details. The same guy Ali once emailed University of Houston’s admission department to get more information about their courses and the university mailed a 2 kg package to Ali. Even when they have a very detailed information available on their website.