Coventry (UK), October 2010 - The IITT has launched a brand-new certification programme for everyone who will be delivering live online learning events, meetings, and webinars. "Today's learning and development professionals are being asked to deliver learning to more people with less budget, and provide learning events that will save money but deliver increased business performance", explains IITT Chief Executive and architect of the programme, Colin Steed.

Oxford (UK), September 2010 - Almost all students (96%) use the internet as a source of information, and seven in ten (69%) use it daily as part of their studies new research published at the 2010 annual conference of the Association for Technology Lecturer reveals.

Hong Kong (HK), August 2010 - NetDimensions, a global provider of performance, knowledge and learning-management systems, has announced the commercial release of a new product, mobile EKP (mEKP). "We believe that mEKP is the world's first full-featured personal learning environment that runs completely off a USB flash drive - no installation required", said NetDimensions Managing Director and CEO Jay Shaw.

Brussels (BE), July 2010 - Traditional universities have been more than slow in integrating ICT in their teaching and learning. The reasons for this are linked to strategic and organizational change issues rather than technological or budgetary ones. Successful eLearning indeed requires new organizational and pedagogical models. This conflicts with the historical model that has shaped the culture of our traditional universities.

Erlangen (GER), July 2010 - Very much due to its success, user-generated content (UGC) poses a number of challenges to the current understanding of education and its institutions. Web2.0 and the corresponding tools enable learners to develop and publish learning content independently from experts' knowledge and institutional frameworks. This development has led to questions as to whether the traditional concept of "authority" is still appropriate at universities and to suggestions for the "ivory tower" of higher education to be opened to the wider world.

Brussels (BE), July 2010 - Twenty eminent thinkers and practitioners of higher education cried out in Brussels for urgent change in higher education. In a manifesto entitled "Empower European Universities", they plead to let the European garden of higher education and research grow in accordance with the basic principles of gardening: variety, empowerment through autonomy, proper nourishment, and internationalization.

London (UK), June 2010 - While a great deal of effort has been devoted to research on the individual ePortfolio and its implementation, the idea of a community ePortfolio has hardly been explored. Delegates to the London ePortfolio Conference (05-07 July 2010) will have the pleasure of listening to Darren Cambridge, who will present an "ePortfolio City in Augusta, Arkansas."

Brussels (B), June 2010 - Can increased use of ICT and new media, self-regulated learning, and the intelligent use of open educational resources drive the creative learning experience? Roberto Carneiro of the Catholic University of Portugal offers his perspective on the Spotlight on Open Educational Practices.

Shipley (UK), June 2010 - The Association of Accounting Technicians (AAT) has announced that computer-based assessments will be central to its revised qualification, due to be launched in July 2010. The AAT has been using BTL's Surpass e-Assessment solution to deliver exams for a while now, whilst also offering the option of a paper-based exam.

Kumasi (GH), May 2010 - At Ghana's Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, three highly competent staff members have developed a new Open Source Content Management System called KAN. Robert Kabutey Okine, Francis Adu-Gyamfi, and John Serbe Marfo are responsible for this achievement and will demonstrate it at eLearning Africa. In the following interview, they have been kind enough to explain to CHECK.point eLearning what's new in KAN.

Budapest (HU), May 2010 - EDEN - the European Distance and ELearning Network -puts emphasis on the balanced representation of genders among speakers, and is thus expressly extending an invitation this year to encourage women to take active part in the Conference, particularly by submitting proposals for presentations and events. Selection processes will attach special attention to equity in order to avoid gender bias among speakers.

Leeds (UK), February 2010 - Positive impacts on learning through blogging, such as active knowledge construction and reflective writing, have been reported. However, not many students use weblogs, even when appropriate facilities are offered by their universities. Researchers Monika Andergassen, Reinhold Behringer, Janet Finlay, Andrea Gorra, and David Moore from Leeds Metropolitan University, UK have introduced their findings on the reasons for this apparent aversion.

London (UK), December 2009 - (by Bob Little) That most British and august of debating institutions, The Oxford Union, has focused its attention on the world of eLearning when it debated the motion that 'this house believes that the eLearning of today is essential for the important skills of tomorrow'. The motion was lost, after learning experts from industry and academia had engaged in a debate at least encouraged, if not sponsored, by the well known eLearning developer, Epic.