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| | PRINT | | Getting Europe to the top |
 Governments in Europe have a significant skills gap in networking and creating and maintaining a future oriented infrastructure to provide students and teachers with fast Internet access. Together with Cisco and other industry leaders a complexe qualification program is offered to reach the necessary knowhow level. CHECKpoint eLearning spoke with Dr. Michelle Selinger about the project.
The Cisco Networking Academy Program is an elearning curriculum put together to be taught through a public private partnership model between Cisco, governments, educational institutions and NGOs. The Cisco Networking Academy Program was created to teach students how to design, build and maintain computer networks thereby equipping them with the skills to be economically active in an area of employment vital to the Internet economy.
The Cisco Networking Academy Program provides web-based media-rich educational content, online testing, student performance tracking, hands-on labs, and instructor training and support. The central feature of the Program is a core curriculum that consists of multimedia instruction and lab exercises. The qualifications attainable as a result of studying the different courses are world-wide industry recognised.
However, the Program is much more than a curriculum. Seen in a public policy context, it addresses a number of concerns that political leaders at all levels of government are trying to deal with. In addition to the growing skills shortage, it helps provide governments with alternative solutions for unemployment and the concept of life-long learning for all citizens, including bringing the Internet and elearning to universities, schools and colleges.
The Cisco Networking Academy Program was borne out of a philanthropic effort to help first one and then several local schools in the US with its networking. In 1993, Cisco embarked on an initiative to design practical, cost-effective networks for schools. It quickly became apparent that designing and installing the networks was not enough, schools also needed some way to maintain the networks after they were up and running. Cisco Senior Consulting Engineer, George Ward, developed training for teachers and staff for maintenance of school networks. The students in particular were eager to learn and the demand was such that it led to the creation of the Cisco Networking Academy Program which was launched in 1997.
Cisco also recognised there was a skills gap in networking which had the potential to hamper the growth of our customers’ aspirations. Using what we had learned from constantly re-educating our own workforce we developed an education programme. Today a key component of Europe's strategy as outlined in the eEurope 2005 Action Plan and the Lisbon eLearning Communication is to create the necessary infrastructure to provide students, researchers and teachers with fast Internet access. In addition to the financial resources that are required to meet this challenge, there are not enough people today with the skills needed to implement and maintain such infrastructure. In Europe there is a 29% shortfall in qualified network specialists.
The Cisco Networking Academy Program seeks to address this skills shortage by offering educational organisations a way to work in partnership with industry to provide students with relevant computing skills within an up-to-date technology environment. It offers an ideal solution to deliver the scale of educational facilities needed to accelerate the implementation of networking training particularly at upper secondary level. It matches the aims stated in the eEurope Action Plan – and reiterated in the Lisbon eLearning Communication – for industry to work closely with public institutions through public private partnerships.
At the eLearning Summit in La Hulpe, Belgium in 2001, Ferry de Rijke, Chairman of the European SchoolNet, said that the financial responsibility for basic education should remain with the public sector, "but what businesses can do is to help fund elements of the innovation process". Michel Porter suggests corporate philanthropy is most sustainable when there is a convergence of social interests with economic interests. In the case of the Cisco Networking Academy Program, the economic benefits of providing people with sound Internetworking skills accrue not just to Cisco but to all organisations that have invested in network infrastructures.
It has also served to signal to other funders that there is a demand for IT industry skills that can be met through such private public partnerships. This has led to the broadening of the Cisco Networking Academy Program offerings to include other courses sponsored by industry leaders such as HP for IT essentials and Panduit for voice and data cabling, and for Cisco to add its own technology offerings to include courses on security and wireless and the next level of networking qualification.
The approach of the Cisco Networking Academy Program is to use to the full both networked and software developments to provide educational institutions with a constantly updated curriculum of technical education in a blended way i.e. class-room teaching supported by online content and interactive and hands-on activities for both teachers and students. The software also tracks activity, captures marks, automates registration and other administrative tasks as well as providing synchronous and asynchronous Q&A and discussion communities.
The CCNA course of the Cisco Networking Academy Program is translated into more than ten languages and instructors are trained though a cascade model (with successful academies creating and training new academies). It is thus entirely localised and decentralised except in standards. It has been a huge success and is currently being delivered to over half a million students in over ten thousand academies in more than 160 countries worldwide. |
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an eLearning Platform | | 3D simulations and serious games are attaining ever-increasing significance for the learning world. A special case of its own is the virtual world Second Life. The CHECK.point eLearning Whitepaper "Second Life as an eLearning Platform" seeks to contribute to the discussion about Second Life’s suitability as a technological platform for education and training. The study answers questions like "For which application scenarios is Second Life suitable?" and "Which topics can be implemented successfully in Second Life?"
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