It was reported today that the third issue of Digital Oman, the Sultanate’s quarterly ICT magazine will be released 30 October. Supported by: ITTS; OEPNPA; Bank Muscat; Siemens; Bahwan CyberTek; Oman Arab Bank; PDO; Nawras; Knowledge Oasis Muscat; Omzest Group; Omantel; and Oman Mobile the magazine has been well received by the Sultanate’s business and government communities. “The first two issues have been great,” remarked Said Al Balushi of the Public Establishment for Industrial Estates (PEIE), “it’s covered IT in sport to website recommendations through to one-on-one interviews with key telco personnel. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed it.”
The magazine’s third issue will carry a series of in-depth articles on e-Learning. Indeed, it is estimated that approximately 80 million EU citizens are low-skilled and research suggests that by 2010 half of all additional new jobs on the labour market will require university education and almost 40% upper secondary level. Logically, the job prospects for the low skilled will decline. So the EU - like other regions in the world - is confronted with the situation that much of their workforce requires training and up-skilling. In this regard, issue three of Digital Oman carries e-Learning stories from Nizwa Technology College (Dr. Walter James), Sultan Qaboos University (Brett Hall), PEIE (Sultan Al Habsi), Yeovil College in the UK and Jordan’s education initiative (ITTS).
On the relevance of e-Learning to Oman’s small business community, Eng. Mohammed Al Ghassani, Executive Vice President, PEIE remarked: “We believe e-Learning through the flexibility and facility of access it offers is an important enabler of lifelong learning. However, while we observe an increase use and impact of e-Learning in large companies - up to 60% of the training needs of key players in the ICT sector is now provided by e-Learning - the uptake in SMEs has to be encouraged.”
Research suggests that the use of ICT in the broad sense for learning is considered a major factor in implementing the paradigm of lifelong learning and in providing staff from SMEs in particular with access to continuing vocational education and training. On a domestic footing, the Digital Oman e-Learning stories suggest that the main objectives of ICT supported learning should take forward the following objectives:
o Increase access to learning opportunities through increased flexibility of delivery modes and by overcoming geographical barriers to participation;
o Enhance the quality of the learning experience in terms of content and teaching; and
o Improve the efficiency of the organisation by reducing costs and increasing productivity.
