Higher Education and Online Learning: Towards a Culture of Virtual Universities

Virtual University is a new perspective of higher education it is refers to the learning without a real or physical campus, and all the course of university are delivered online. According to Website of the international council for the distance Education (ICDE) virtual universities is “Institutions which offer programs only by electronics means, and which are not Open Universities.”Nowadays, due to the rapid development of technology digital change can be seen across the globe. This change has come in all sector of society, one of them is the medium of online learning. Online learning considered as a feature of change forces for higher education in the twenty first century.  This online learning method transform learning in digitized form from traditional and also enhance the capacity of distance learning. Increasing access to technology has touched all aspect of life. One of the important aspects is education, digital technology is ensuring its reach in educational field. The impact of technology in higher education is widely visible, now higher education becomes more technocrats. Virtual university gives distance learning further elaboration and overcomes its shortcoming and constraints through virtual medium. The culture of digital universities is gradually developing also in India and it has been going on in other parts of the world since along. People living in rural areas and poor people do not get proper education, in such a challenging situation online learning become even more important. But to make it successful along with online learning its infrastructure will also have to be strengthened such as proper net connectivity and learning gadgets for poor people. we need to create a digital culture of learning that ensures more and more people to have a presence in higher education through virtual universities.

This paper is based on secondary data and main objective of this paper is explore the need and importance of online learning in Higher Education. This paper will also analyses how is the culture of a virtual university developing through online learning.