About a decade or so ago, youngsters thrilled to a TV cartoon series called ‘Transformers’, in which the Autobots, led by Optimus Prime, fought against the evil forces of the Decepticons, led by Megatron. The stories had a new lease of life earlier this year with the release of a ‘Transformers’ feature film. Now [...]
The story so far… The premise is that, without world class skills, UK businesses will find it increasingly difficult to innovate and compete. The Treasury tackled this problem by establishing the Leitch Review to identify the optimal skills mix to maximise economic growth by 2020. The resulting report published a set of targets for workforce [...]
The most recent Government legislation on skills – in the spirit of the 1563 Statute of Artificers – was the Industrial Training Act of 1964. It was employers' adverse reactions to the application of this Act over the next 25 years or so that has brought the UK to the position where we needed a [...]
Imagine my delight and surprise the other day when I was taken out to lunch by some senior executives from a very large and internationally known e-learning developer. It is flattering to be offered refreshment from any hand but the bigger the business, the more flattering it is, of course. Comment: We were ushered to [...]
Human resources professionals need to know their limitations, according to the former Granada chief executive and business troubleshooter Sir Gerry Robinson, and ex- BBC director general Greg Dyke. Speaking at the CIPD’s conference in Harrogate in September, they said that HR's role was to make things happen. Robinson, who confessed he was not a [...]
The Institute of Digital Learning at the University of Wales, Newport, has launched a number of free interactive games that help people explore topics such as disability, age diversity, racial equality and homelessness. These games are contained within the 'Addressing Barriers: Enhancing Services' series of Equality and Diversity toolkits, which incorporate expert video tutorials alongside [...]
Mobile learning (m-learning) is moving beyond the innovation stage to full implementation in all sectors of the economy, according to the results of a survey of the members throughout the world of the US-based eLearning Guild (eLG). Apparently: 44.8% of respondents expect to do more m-learning in the next 12 months. The US and Canada [...]
The use of virtual worlds for learning is attracting attention after the explosion of Second Life™ and similar online virtual communities. However, unleashing the power of virtual collaborative worlds to instructional designers and authors demands much higher levels of openness, accessibility and reusability in the underlying technologies and tools on the one side and lower [...]
Web-based management training company, CrossKnowledge, has published the first in a series of distance learning management programmes developed with the Open University. The French based company, which began in 2000 and now has more than 1m users of its products worldwide, recently opened offices in London. This move was aimed at serving the UK [...]
In Gordon Brown’s Cabinet re-organisation, the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) was replaced by two Government departments. Ed Balls heads the Department for Children, Schools and Families, which is responsible for pre-19 education and family and children policy, while responsibility for the development and funding of further and higher education is the remit of [...]
