Archive for November, 2008

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France to Expand Scope of Higher Education

Monday, November 24th, 2008

Dawn

France will expand higher education facilities to Pakistani students in various fields of science and technology, particularly in agricultural disciplines.

Universities and Scientific Attaché, embassy of France in Pakistan, Dr Olivier Bergossi, said this in a meeting with University of Agriculture Faisalabad (UAF) vice-chancellor Dr Iqrar Ahmed. A four-member French delegation, led by Dr Bergossi, visited the academia in connection with a “Talent Hunt’ program launched by the French government seeking scholars of various disciplines for higher education facilities in France.

Dr Bergossi said France had been extending PhD education and research facilities to more than 200 Pakistani students and one-fourth of the total strength belonged to UAF. Earlier Attaché for Science & Technology Sandie Favier told the UAF head that the French government was contemplating expansion of its higher education program for Pakistan.

Dr Iqrar told the delegation that the talent hunt move was need of the hour for extending opportunities to young agricultural scholars in collaboration with the embassy of France.

APEC Leaders Pledge to Expand Co-op on Education, Health Issues

Sunday, November 23rd, 2008

China View

Leaders from the 21 member economies of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum pledged Sunday to expand cooperation on education and health issues.

“Ensuring that all members of our economies receive a quality education is critical to achieving social, individual, economic and sustainable development,” the leaders said in a declaration after a two-day summit in the Peruvian capital Lima. “It (education) enables people to take advantage of opportunities created by globalization,” said the statement.

The leaders supported the efforts of APEC Education Ministers to strengthen education systems in the region including ongoing support to the APEC Education Network.

They welcomed the research-based steps taken by APEC in the areas of mathematics and sciences, language learning, career and technical education, information and communication technologies and systemic reform.

They pledged to facilitate international exchanges, working towards reciprocal exchanges of talented students, graduates and researchers.

The leaders also reaffirmed commitment to build regional capacity to minimize health-related threats including avian and human influenza pandemics and communicable diseases such as HIV/AIDS.

They pledged continued efforts to ensure that economies are well prepared to deal with health threats and to respond to them in a way that minimizes their adverse impacts on human welfare, trade and investment.

Meanwhile, the leaders expressed concerns over gender discrimination. “We committed to strengthening the capacity of APEC members to ensure that gender discrimination are taken into account in the development of trade and economic policy, and to ensuring that the region’s women are better able to participate in and benefit from regional and global trade,” said the document.

Nineteen leaders from the APEC member economies attended the two-day summit, part of the APEC Leaders’ Week on Nov. 16-23.

Established in 1989, APEC groups Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, China, China’s Hong Kong, Chinese Taipei, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Peru, the Philippines, Russia, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand, the United States and Vietnam.

The Evolution of Employee Training

Wednesday, November 19th, 2008

Business Week

Experienced, knowledgeable employees are an organization’s most important asset. So why then are training and employee education programs the first to get the ax in an economic downturn?

The problem lies in the way the programs are designed. Current education and training programs tend to emphasize event-specific activity. The result is a program that focuses more on attendance than actual learning. But combining a learning management system with an online social community can create an incentive for employees from all departments to participate (without threatening job termination) and helps foster better, deeper, and perpetual learning by marrying formal with informal learning.

A few points to consider when developing a social media model for a workplace environment:

- People learn at different speeds. A traditional one-hour training program will be less effective than giving your employees a forum to discuss new ideas and share past experiences.

- Event learning is flawed in concept. You cannot learn to ride a bike in a seminar, and people cannot master new skills in a one-time training event. Employees need an environment that allows and fosters perpetual learning to support skill mastery.

- Learning is work. It is much more cost-effective to create a social community where employees can quickly relay information and resolve problems than to send them to a week-long retreat.

The bottom line is that traditional training using courses and workshops are effective for establishing company conventions and framework, but most employees are already beyond that stage. What they need is a social learning community where they can gain relevant information in bite-size increments and exchange ideas quickly to fill in gaps in what they already know.

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