eLearning Can Help Economies Remain Competitive
Sestri Levante (IT), December 2010 - Carin Martell, International Alliances Manager at the leading learning-content-management (LCMS) and digital-repository (DR) solution provider, eXact learning solutions, was one of the keynote speakers at the European eLearning Summit, held in Sheffield in November. Presenting "A European Perspective", Martell outlined world population and economic trends - to set a context for the future development - and value - of eLearning.
She explained that the average age of people in Europe is rising, while the populations in Asia's growing economies are both young and plentiful. "For example-, she elucidated, -œsome eighty percent of the population of Pakistan is under thirty - and one billion workers will join the labour market in Asian economies such as those of India and China in the next ten years.
"Europe's ageing population, especially in southern Europe, suggests that, as a European community, we'll experience both labour and skills shortages - and this will put each constituent national economy under pressure to remain competitive in world markets. Like the US, Europe should create a bigger -œhome- market and upskill its workers in order to compete with the Chinese, Indian, and US economies in particular."
Martell believes that eLearning can help by spreading interoperability and standards across each European country's learning activities - affecting everything from European competency-based education and accreditation systems to learning-delivery technologies and delivery mechanisms.
"We need to break out of our corporate and national knowledge and skills silos and embrace the opportunities for personalised and contextualised learning that digital learning technologies bring-, she argues. "We should be exploiting cloud technologies and introducing learning without physical or virtual boundaries.
"There are new technologies and solutions being introduced into learning today that are radically changing the way people learn-, Martell continues. "There are new business models - for example ones not based on the traditional -œpay-per-user- concept - and there are new ways of getting learning content.
The European eLearning Summit delegates - Europe's top eLearning strategists and content and systems developers, who were drawn from the private and public sectors as well as academia - discussed the European and world markets for eLearning and also identified industry trends and today's key eLearning issues. The Summit was organised by Learning Light, the Sheffield-based company that focuses on promoting the use of eLearning and learning technologies and was supported by learndirect and by Creativesheffield.
