Bangalore: Building on its commitment to advance the innovative adoption of E-learning technologies and open standards, Sun Microsystems Inc has named Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management, Kerala (IITMK) as a Sun Regional Centre of Excellence (COE) for E-Learning, according to an official press release.

The first regional COE selected in India, IIITM-K will join an elite group of only four universities worldwide recognized by Sun and the academic community as leading edge researchers in E-learning technologies.

IIITM-K has empowered students and staff to study when they like, where they like and how they like by putting in place an advanced e-learning programme called Education Grid. With the Education Grid, students can take classes from anywhere, logging onto the Internet to listen to and review their lectures, and holding tutorial discussions via an online forum. The Education Grid is based on TeN's Academic E- learning application, running on Sun's servers, the release said

According to Dr K Srivatsan, director, IIITM-K, "This institution is honoured to be selected as a Sun Centre of Excellence. We see our collaboration with Sun as key to fully utilising emerging technologies to further our research efforts. Our work will continue to push the boundaries of e-learning, given our commitment to the Knowledge Campus concept, where a university utilises enabling technologies to focus on knowledge production."

IIITM-K was the natural choice as the first India regional COE. The research IIITM-K conducts exemplifies the principles of Sun's COE programme – innovations that bring real world results," said Andrew Lim, director – Asia South, Global Education and Research for Sun Microsystems. "This further collaboration will complement the excellent foundation we have built together in IIITMK," he added.

As a concept, the Knowledge Campus focuses on leveraging technologies and products from academic institutions around the world in the areas of e-learning, front-end portals, library automation and digital asset management. IIITMK, as a newly named Sun Regional Centre of Excellence, will have a key leadership role in support of the Knowledge Campus, promoting the sharing and collaboration in the use of technologies, developing content, defining standards and building best-of-breed pedagogical practices, the release said.