Business proposal for implementing virtual learning at Avington College

Avington College

Virtual Learning Center Business Proposal

This business proposal covers the necessary processes, equipment and all the requirements financial and otherwise required for fully integration of a virtual learning center at Avington College which has ten employees with a student population of between 80 and 100. The college offers private education to students of between 16 years and 18 years of age. The purpose of this business proposal is to recommend the best options that are economically viable in order to setup the virtual learning center and its related resources. The proposal may also include the requirements to set up an online radio station and the necessities for setting up a virtual college in Second Life. The concept of virtual learning has in fact been praised and proven to be highly effective in the process of delivering the core curriculum requirements of most colleges. The virtual learning environment has been shown to therefore improve the performance of students who participate in the virtual learning environment (VLE) as compared to the performance from students who are taught in the conventional lecture rooms in which the same learning materials are presented by the same lecture (Goldberg & McKhann,2000). The Concept of virtual learning is delivered by means of audio-visual, animation and multimedia texts in an environment which is computer generated.

Type and configuration of network

It is widely acknowledged that it is important to ensure that learning activities should never be disrupted. The leaning experience via the computer network systems too must be tailored in a way that allows for authentic and hand on experience (Agilent Technologies, 2001; Costa, 2000; Logical UK Ltd., 2002 Nortel Networks, 2002). This notion is however curtailed by a variety of shortcomings such as the lack of sufficient funds to support and maintain the different network infrastructure that makes part of the Virtual Learning system. This is fundamental to ensure that every student gains equal access to the virtual learning resources within both the scheduled and unscheduled class hours. The second bottleneck can be attributed to the lack of appropriate or rather sufficient physical space that is fully air-conditioned for the effectiveness of the server operations and the occupants' comfort. The other problem can be attributed to the lack of secure network system or environment that can result to serious privacy and legal implications. The above reasons together with others that had earlier been mentioned makes it necessary to adopt the network type and configuration described below:

The network type is a virtual network whose configuration consists of a host machine together with 40 desktops and 20 laptops. The host machine is to use a special operating system which is open. The host machines operating system is therefore Virtual Box, an open source alternative to VMWare?, which is commercial virtual machine software. The VirtualBox is to be used to connect the virtual machines and to manage the virtual network that connects the virtual machines. The other essential part of the network is the Virtual Network Computing (VNC) software (Richardson, Stafford-Fraser, Wood, & Hopper, 1998). VirtualBox's capability to support Windows, Linux, OpenSolaris and Macintosh together with hosting and supporting of an extended number of guest operating systems which include even Windows (NT 4.0, 2000, XP, Server 2003, Vista, Windows 7) and DOS/Windows 3.x, Linux (2.4 and 2.6) together Solaris and OpenSolaris, and OpenBSD is an added advantage (VirtualBox,2010). This is to ensure that all clients in the system can be easily integrated into the system without any problems. Our choice for the operating system for the client is however Linux due to its open source nature and the need to be economical in the design of the virtual learning system.

Figure 1. The components and configurations of the Virtual Network

Introduction

Avington College's Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) is designed and is based on free open source software packages which are designed with a sound utilization of the laid down pedagogical principles. This is in order to educate the students if Avington College and to assist their educators in the creation of effective online communities. The operating systems on the whole system within the institution are distributed under the GNU General Public License.

The Virtual Learning Environment provides a wide spectrum of functionalities which aid in the delivery, administration, support and the creation and functionalities and activities that aid in the enhancement of participation in the learning activities of the students. The system allows for a seamless delivery of content and collaboration between the educators and the learners.

Some of the features of the Virtual learning Environment are:

Creation and upload of content;

Discussion on forums with chat rooms;

Tools for Instant Messaging (IM)

Presentation and submission of Assignments;

Purpose of the Policy

The purpose of the Avington College VLE Policy is to specify the user responsibilities and to promote the appropriate use VLE resource with the intention of protecting all members of the College community. The VLE Policy applies both within and out with college premises.

Registration

All users must register to use the College VLE.

All registered users must abide by the College VLE Policy and any other applicable College policies

On registration, all users must give their consent to Robert Avington College on the processing of their personal data via the Avington College VLE and to acknowledge the College's Data Protection Statement.

Disclaimer

Kindly note that the Robert Avington College reserves the right to remove and amend any of the content which appears on the Avington College VLE at any time and without any form of prior notice.

Also note that the Avington College VLE may contain links to other websites which are outside the College's control and that the College is not responsible for any the content or accessibility of the sites.

The life of equipment and training

All the equipment in the system must be properly taken care of by both the stdents, the staff in order for them to attain their intended lifespan over 8 years. Proper training must therefore be accorded to both the staff and the students so as to ensure longer life span for the equipment and better success from the system.