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

With the development of technology, E- learning (Electronic learning) is a technology where support the learning process. Lately, E-learning has used in some Malaysian Universities that the students attend the course or programs by studying online and rarely attending to the campus.

Pro of E-learning
-Flexible: E-learning enables the students to learn or complete the chapter anytime as long as they are convenient at that time and not just need to fix to the particular time to attend the course in the campus. Students can attend at off-hours or from home or anyplace because this is international sharing.
-Asynchronous interaction: Instead of face-to-face interaction, e-learning does not require the students to respond immediately, student can self-pacing depends on their understanding. For those who are quick learners they can learn through the content faster while for slow learners they can learn on their own speed and this will increase their satisfaction and reduce the stress.
-Confidence: Students can refresh back to the point that not very power on it or there will be quick reference material available to the students in order to reduce their burden of responsibility of mastery on the particular course.

Cons of e-learning
- The most serious cons of e-learning is that for those student who is low motivation or has bad study habit may fall behind. E-learning requires times to complete especially those assignment or they will postpone their learning every time. For e-learning, student self-discipline is important, they have to be highly motivated and responsible because all the work they do is on their own.
- This will decrease the communication skill of students with the other students or lectures. Besides that, there will also less social and cultural interaction. The students will become impersonality and eliminate peer-to-peer learning that are consider as quite important in student life.
- Students may need to have particular skills on the learning programs. E-learning may require the students to access to the internet so slow internet connection or older computers may make accessing course materials difficult. Thus, without the skills, good fittings, software it is quite difficult for the students to succeed in e-learning and the student may give up.

There are still many benefits that e-learning bring to the students but it also need to care of all perspectives. From the student perspectives, they can save the travel cost and even for those outstation students they can study from their home and save their accommodation expenses. Besides that, some may also be able to find some part time job when they are taking the course. For me, I will choose the traditional method because college life or student life may important and memorable experienced for all the students.

http://www.e-learningguru.com/articles/art1_3.htm

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

Do you know what is E-Government?

How do you check or pay your summons?

Do you know what is e-filing Income Tax Form?

According to Wikipedia, e-Government (electronic government) is a diffused neologism used to refer to the use of information and communication technology to provide and improve government services, transactions and interactions with citizens, businesses, and other arms of government.

The purpose of e-Government in Malaysia is to lead the country into the Information Age. It has improved both the government operation system and the government services to the people of Malaysia. Furthermore, it seeks to improve the convenience, accessibility and quality of interactions with citizens and businesses. Simultaneously, it will improve information flows and processes within government to improve the speed and quality of policy development, coordination and enforcement.

e-Government's vision is for government, businesses and citizenry working together for the benefit of Malaysia and all of its citizens. Its goal is to improve the effectiveness and efficiencies of the government in delivering services to the people of Malaysia, enabling the government to become more responsive to the needs of its citizens.

e-Government's Implementations:

1. Project Monitoring System (SPP II)

• SPP II is designed to provide a mechanism for monitoring and implementation of government projects, provides a platform for exchanging ideas, and demonstrating best practices models in information management and communication services.

2. Human Resource Management Information System (HRMIS)

• HRMIS provides single interface for government employees to perform human resource functions effectively and efficiently. Besides that, it will also help to standardize all human resource processes. Its objective is not just for record keeping, but also provides transactional functions such as leave application, loan processing, competency management, recruitment and selection
  

3. Generic Office Environment (GOE)

• GOE's goal is to introduce a fully integrated, distributed and scalable office environment that leverages use of multimedia Information Technology. This allows collaboration across all workers, enables efficient communication, and ensures right information reaching the right people in a timely manner.

4. Electronic Procurement (EP)

• EP's objective is to re-engineer, automate, and transform current procurement system. The project would cover central contract, tender and direct purchase. EP helps to increase transparency, saves time and money, while encourage suppliers to go electronic and join the K-economy.

5. Electronic Services (E-Services)

• E-Services allowed citizens of Malaysia to engage in transactions with government and utilities payments, such as telephone and electricity bills and police summons.
  

6. Electronic Labour Exchange (ELX)

• ELX's goal objective is to improve the mobilization of human resource and optimize workforce utilization through systematic matching of job seekers of job vacancies.

7. Internal Revenue Department (IRD)

• IRD allowed companies use My Key digital signature to digitally sign their C form and submit the document electronically to Internal Revenue Board. Individuals were expected be able to file their taxes online to IRD using My Key.
  

Citizen's Adoption Strategies:

E-Services is rapidly gaining attention and importance. Citizens expect the governmental services to be high degree of quality, quantity, and availability in a 24-hour, seven-days-a-week, and year-round fashion. Every country's governments are developing information systems and electronic services that have the capacity to meet these emerging service needs and demands.

The success in delivering electronic services are depends on the capability and self-confidence of citizens in performing e-transactions, as well as their trust and confidence in the protection of their personal data within an open and accountable government.

The significant predictors of citizens’ intention to use e-Services are the ease of use, compatibility, and trustworthiness. It perceived reactive advantage, perceived image, perceived compatibility, perceived usefulness, and relative advantage are significant elements of e-Government adoption.

Referencing:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Government
http://www.mait.com/admin/enews_images/MAIT%20Country%20Intelligence%20eNews96_37.pdf
http://ecomworld.wordpress.com/2008/07/08/e-government-in-malaysia-2/

Coporate Blogging: A new marketing communication tool for companies

Corporate blog is become very familiar to be a new marketing communication tool for many companies. As a generalization, it is a blog which created by the company in order to achieve the organization goals. The corporate blog has divided into three categories namely, internal blogs, external blogs, and CEO blogs.

Basically, the internal blogs is participated by employees of the organization by sharing the information and freely discuss the important issues which may help the organization to develop the collective intelligence and enhanced the communication between the various levels of the organization.

The external blogs is facilitated the company employees, teams and spokespersons to share their views and opinion. Besides, it can be a communication tool for company to be public relations, promote a new product and so on. The external blogs also provide information for consumers and some web blog is allowed make comments. The company can developed and improved their marketing plans, customer services and quality of the products based on the consumers’ feedback.

Conference or printed memos can be eliminated by creation of the corporate blogs and it can more accessible. Moreover, it enhanced the communication among each others in different levels of management which will help the company in achieving the goals. Besides, it also helps the company to get better understanding of the expectation of consumer towards the products and services.

In our opinion, corporate blogging is an effective tool to promoting and marketing for a company. However, since the corporate blogging is very familiar but there are some companies are still not blog yet. They might not know the benefits of blogging and they have different kind of way to do promoting and marketing. Thus, education and training program can be provided to enhance the uses of blogging.

Review a local, transactional e-commerce site : Lelong.com.my

Do you have experience of online shopping or participating in e-auction?

Do you visit e-Bay frequently?

I do. I love online shopping very much, as i can have more variety of shopping and sometimes i can even buy worthy goods at a lower price. So, please don't think that I am only a spendthrift girl, but actually I am also a wise consumer.

Other than the world famous known auction site, e-Bay. Let me introduce you a local e-auction site, http://www.lelong.com.my/. It is an auction platform that provides people a platform to buy and sell things online, such as electronic products, books, home appliances and so on- even the houses or cars.


This e-commerce site has established in Malaysia several years ago.

• Just like e-bay, lelong.com provide search engine in order to help the users easily find what they are interesting in.
  
• Besides, this e-commerce site also allows you to open your own “store”.
• It is also available in three different language versions- English, Chinese and Malay. It makes lelong.com stands out among the competitors in Malaysian market.
• Auctioneer Profile and Ratting, this function allows you to check the auctioneer trade history and record, it help us to have more confident and reassurance trade with him/her. Normally we will find one trusted auctioneer better have high success trade percentage, therefore can reduce the opportunity of fraud auction.
• If you bid successful, you must make payment by follow the auctioneer instructions. For example, bank in the money to him first. If you never try bid auction online you should try, you will find that is very excited, and you can learn a lot from the whole process.
  
• Before you bid or sell your item you must register an account with your real identity first.
1. You would have to verify your hand phone number & Email.
2. You would have to verify your I/C , home line phone and make a payment of RM10.00 to avoid you making e-auction fraud.

Referencing:
http://www.quarkbase.com/show/lelong.com.my
http://www.lelong.com.my/