Ground-breaking e-learning summit opens in Dubai

The MELT (Middle East Learning Technologies) summit underlines Dubai's status as global leader in the development of on-line learning, the fastest-growing trend in education technology.

Delegates from all over the Gulf region, Asia, Europe, and the USA come together in the Middle East for the first time to join industry specialists, vendors, and users of e-learning and knowledge management.

Top international e-learning practitioners will present papers on the dynamic progress being made in this field and more than 60 companies will showcase the latest technological developments with simultaneous translation into Arabic and English.

Demand for exhibition space has been so great that the organisers have had to increase the floor space to more than 1,000 sq m.

MELT director Sally-Ann Moore, one of the worlds' leading experts in e-learning, describes the conference as one of the most exciting and groundbreaking ever held on the subject, underlining Dubai's leadership in the domain, as illustrated by the Knowledge Village venture and the increasing number of universities and virtual campuses being set up in the emirate.

Highlights of the two-day programme include unpublished results from an in-depth survey of strategic e-learning deployments, and new case studies that show outstanding economic and social impacts in medical training, customer care, languages and marketing.

Speakers will also present the latest data on the economics and possibilities of future learning technologies and how new developments in IT will vastly increase the possibilities and cost effectiveness of technology-based learning.

There are now about 130 million on-line learners across the world and the Europe and Middle East market alone is estimated at more than $6 billion for 2005, underlining the industry's soaring growth.

'IT spending in the UAE, which has a specific dedication to the use of new technology in the knowledge economy, rose to $1.6 billion last year - a growth rate of nearly nine per cent,' said Moore.

'MELT is another indication of Dubai leadership in this field and is being attended by everyone of consequence in the e-learning business.'