At an event which attracted the UK’s top suppliers of online-delivered learning content, held at the end of July in the Australian High Commission in The Strand, London, Graeme Coomber, CEO of EdTrIn explained his organisation’s aim of managing a lifetime of learning for large numbers of the world’s population – beginning with those living in the Asia-Pacific, Indian sub-Continent and MENA regions.

Graeme Coomber, of EdTrIn.

“EdTrIn is a content delivery platform which can provide thousands of learning programmes to millions of learners,” said Graeme. “We believe that EdTrIn’s business model is unique within the e-learning market.

“Our medium-term goal is to be servicing the lifetime learning needs of 1m people within three years. This means that we’ll be helping these people to manage their learning needs from their early adult years to retirement.”

According to Graeme, EdTrIn – which is due to float on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange in the next few weeks – already has agreements in place to deliver education and training materials, via various online learning technologies, to those living in urban and remote areas in the Asia-Pacific region as well as the Middle East.

“Already, the world market for education is $4.4tr annually,” he said. “That’s more than the world’s total expenditure on armaments and software combined.

“And, with the growth in the world’s population, as well as an increasingly highly competitive global marketplace, there’s every likelihood that this expenditure on education will continue to grow,” he added.

Hosted by Geoffrey Conaghan, The Agent-General for Victoria, Australia, the event was intended to encourage the UK’s top e-learning content producers to become suppliers to EdTrIn. In addition to a presentation by Graeme Coomber, those present also heard from EdTrIn’s head of Global Education and Training Solutions, Dr Abdul Khan; Jim Dickson, its Director of UK Acquisitions, and from David Patterson, a Director of Learning Light, an organisation which advises EdTrIn and helps others to improve their business performance via e-learning and learning technologies.

Geoffrey Conaghan.

Drawing on Learning Light’s recent report on some the world’s leading e-learning markets – A Review of the e-learning markets of the UK, EU and China 2014 – David Patterson focused on an analysis of the Chinese market, where e-learning is known as ‘model digital education’.

David Patterson, of Learning Light.

Dr Abdul Khan, a former Assistant Director-General for Communication and Information for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), reminded delegates that, although the world is experiencing a technology revolution, we should be conscious of the human dimension of that technology. He concluded that this, in the form of learning and development activities around the world, offered a great many opportunities for EdTrIn and its partners.

Outlining the EdTrIn model, Jim Dickson explained that EdTrIn wants to offer content providers a platform to deliver content into the Asia-Pacific, the Indian sub-Continent and MENA regions and it wants to offer its customers learning content that leads to some form of qualification.

EdTrIn recently opened its Australian Education Development and Operational Headquarters in Melbourne, Australia, to market online learning technologies and materials to the Asia-Pacific market – especially to China, India, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand and Myanmar.