S'pore IT center targets 12,000 e-learners a year

The center trained 4,000 students last year.

According to ISS director Lim Swee Cheang, the center will rely heavily on online learning, which he described as "a disruptive technology".

"E-learning is a disruptive technology because it has the potential to disrupt the classroom teaching business," he said in his speech at the opening of a new ISS office Thursday.

However, disrupting the traditional teaching business is not without its challenges, mainly because it is still in the pioneering stage. "It is expensive to produce good quality e-content, the quick and dirty cheap version of e-content has limited usage, the effectiveness of e-learning is still being studied," he said, "and the forecast of market size is a wild guess."

Nevertheless, Lim offered a forecast that out of the 20,000 students, it expects at least 60 percent to get their lessons through the Internet by 2010. Some of the advantages of e-learning, Lim noted, include flexible studying from home and being able to get credits at the students' own pace.

Some of the courses conducted at ISS include strategic IT planning, business process management, IT outsourcing and e-commerce implementation.

In April, ISS launched its first e-learning program called Certificate of IT Project Management.