WEF member company offers assistance in e-Learning to Jordanian ICT companies

The Jordan Education Initiative (JEI), launched at the Extraordinary Meeting of the World Economic Forum in the Dead Sea, aims at building a model of efficient public-private partnership for the acceleration of educational reform in developing countries through unleashing the innovation of teachers and students, and demonstrating the effective use of ICT in the learning process.

Mr. Mehta led an interactive workshop attended by int@j member companies, and involved detailed dialogue between the participants and the speaker on the roles and opportunities of Jordan's e-Learning companies. Mr. Mehta briefed the attendees that the purpose of the session was to brief the companies on the Jordan Education Initiative, as well as to formulate industry development objectives and accompanying work plan for the next 12 months.

Emile Cubeisy, Advisor e-Initiatives at the Ministry of ICT said that "the project, will serve to accelerate a broader strategy, as well as provide an opportunity for innovation in public-private cooperation."

For his part, Mr. Mehta addressed the common challenges that are being faced by Jordanian companies. These challenges, based on a survey that was distributed to the attendees prior to the workshop, indicated that while world class products and innovations were being created in Jordan, new market strategies and cash requirements remain to be the biggest challenges to the development of the e-Learning cluster of companies.

However, there was group consensus that this is an opportunity that should involve all companies, each utilizing its competitive edge to contribute to the different components of the initiative. "The vision of the e-Learning Initiative is to learn through collaborative effort", said Randa Ayoubi, Chief Executive Officer of Rubicon. "If we work together on this initiative based on what we know best, then it would re-emphasize the vision and it would create a great model", added Ayoubi.

The two-hour discussion ended with an agreement that the next step will be to start working on a proposed work plan for the upcoming year, with a timeline of what is required of each participating organization.

Based in Silicon Valley, Vector Capital is a national venture capital firm, whose mission is to create startup momentum for existing technology companies. Their presence in Jordan is to assist primarily in e-Learning, and help advance the JEI further.

Jordanian companies participating in this workshop included: CEB, Cisco Systems International, Integrated Technology Group (ITG), JAID, Menhaj Educational Technologies, Rubicon, SchoolArabia, Sigma Soft Inc., United Business Applications (UBA).