Intuition Publishing, established in 1985, considers itself to be a pioneer in Internet learning. The company provides structured training courses on a wide range of financial, treasury and securities products.

Flexibility is arguably the biggest advantage of its courses which can be accessed over the Internet from the office or home, Intuition's Business Development Manager Andrew Lupton (left) said.

But he stresses that, "Online learning is interactive. It's not like distance learning. We are telling people what they can do such as Series 7, the General Securities qualification exam for NASD."

Series 7 is broken into 18 tutorials which cover seven critical areas of the NASD exam. The tutorials are filled with questions, tests and micro-simulations which make learning fun, interactive and easy to absorb, he said.

Although primarily designed as corporate solutions for financial institutions, the company recently joined forces with eSchool Limited to offer selected online financial courses to the general public.

General Manager of eSchool Tony Pang (left) said the company offers a range of Web-based courses from IT programmes to languages.

"Education is going through a reshaping process and more and more people are using the Web as a learning tool," he said.

eSchool, which was launched in April this year, is limiting the content of its online courses to beginner and intermediate levels to avoid scaring students off, and because the intermediate levels offer a much wider customer base, Mr Pang said.