Unlike traditional online courses that charge a fee, limit enrollment and provide credit or certification, Moocs (massive open online courses) are usually free or low cost and can host hundreds of  thousands global participants.  Although MOOC have been around for years in the form of collective techie learning gatherings, participation in 2012 has ballooned at a rapid pace likened to FaceBook in its heyday.  According to The Year of the MOOCarticle in the New YorkTimes, edX, a nonprofit start-up backed by Harvard and MIT, had 370,000 registrants in the fall of its first official courses. This paled in comparison to the amount of students that Courseraattained in its first year of online learning opportunities, 1.7 million!

Will MOOCs Replace education as we know it?

Like any new trend, massive participation in online classes has its challenges. Lynda Weinman has ample experience when pointing out that they are by no means a replacement for formal education.  As a former digital animator, special effects designer and classroom college teacher, Linda paved the path for an earlier version of MOOC education in the mid 90’s when she founded Lynda.comas an aide to her own students. Over four million students and 2,200 courses later she’s confident when clarifying that many of the collegespartnered with Lynda.com use the tutorials as added features to their existing courses.  When asked in an interview with ReadWriteBuilders, if high technical companies look at online programs in terms of advancement as a supplement to traditional education or as a way for people to further their careers, Lynda feels that “it’sjust one example of something that you can do to enhance your attractiveness to potential employers. But [it’s also important to have] a portfolio and body of work, references that actually work out, showing that you had success in the past.”

MOOC Benefits:

Globalization
Globalization is the fundamental force changing IT service delivery and business's competitive activities in almost every vertical market — and thus economies — in some way, shape or form. One might say that globalization is not a new trend and has been commonplace for quite some time now. Yes, but with the changing economic environment globalizations has special implications for the IT outsourcing industry. With developed countries like the U.S. keeping a strict eye on generating local jobs, IT outsourcing especially in Asian countries such as India and China is expected to see globalization brining in big shifts in business strategy

Potential Impact of Globalization

·         Increase in near shoring in addition to outsourcing. Near shoring essentially refers to existing IT companies setting up development/delivery centers in Nordic and South American regions in order to offer same time zone services and also bypass the laws governing local hiring

·         A truly global delivery model. Service delivery models will have to become more efficient and flexible and work well even if service teams spread across continents

This will mean that large IT outsourcing companies such as TCS will have to expand their presence globally from just having sales offices to actual delivery teams shipping out solutions.

Visual Studio .NET is one of many tools available at your disposal for web development. But where some programs may focus on HTML coding or graphics, Visual Studio .NET is a complete tool set that can be used to not only create XML web services and ASP web applications, but desktop and mobile applications as well. So what are some features that are included in the latest release?

·         Visual J#. This is most well-known by developers who are well-versed in the language of Java. It is best used when building services via the .NET framework, or when building applications.

·         Smart Device Applications. This enables you to generate, repair, and install applications that can be used on smart phones, PDAs, and other devices.

·         ASP.NET Mobile Design. Allows for building web applications for not only PDAs and mobile phones, but pagers as well. This also allows a designer to manipulate the mobile Web form of an application.

A career in the field of software development remains immensely popular due to various factors. Chief among them of course is the higher compensation and lucrative pay scale in the IT industry when compared to other career options. In addition, the flexibility of work hours and the sheer sense of achievement experienced by one while creating new programs are unsurpassed by any other job.

Popularity and reach of Software Programs

Software programming has become a quintessential part of our day to day life, right from the smartphones in your pocket, to video gaming, and everything in between. The opportunities in this field are truly astounding. The niches for specializing are also diverse, from creating operating systems, to mobile app development, or web app development to name a few.

There are various ways in which you can distinguish yourself in the market for the much coveted title of software programmer. Here, we focus on some of them.