The Power of Education

BM. How can encouraging employees education help companies achieve their own goals?
Fadi Khalek. To achieve business success, an organisation must ensure that its workforce is productive, efficient, motivated and, above all, well retained. This perspective towards the workplace talent continues to lead organisations into taking a more proactive, dynamic and effective approach towards personnel management with learning and development being a major pillar of such approach. Continued education, when adequately implemented, can ensure that experienced talent is properly transferred through peer to peer mentoring and coaching educational programs and that new talent is effectively motivated by drawing learning paths that simultaneously meet business objectives and personal growth.

BM. How can online education institutions ensure that the right dynamic between students and tutors is achieved?
FK. When we address learning requirements at the workplace, we take a hybrid approach that blends face-to-face classroom work with online, personalised learning in order to achieve the best of both worlds. With our partners, we make sure we use the most optimal learning technologies to achieve that. Such technologies combine both synchronous tools such as virtual classrooms, chatting and video conferencing and asynchronous tools such as discussions, podcasts, wikis, emails and online simulations. This provides an environment that not only matches face-to-face interaction butt, in many cases, even supersedes it.

BM. Students can ‘attend’ a course at anytime, from anywhere, and course material is often accessible 24-hours-a-day, seven days a week. How important are these factors?
FK. In a typical classroom environment, it is estimated that the retention percentage of any taught material among learners does not exceed, at best, 30 percent. One of the main reasons for this is the relevance of the material for the learner. This necessitates that we develop learning solutions that are able to not only make learning material available to the learner any time, but that are also capable of tailoring the right learning material to the right learner. With online learning environments learners do not only have unlimited accessibility to learning material, but can also have personalised, engaging, interactive and relevant material that they can associate with while still maintaining the collaborative, social and mentored experience of face to face learning.

BM. How is UKS aiding e-learning across the Middle East?
FK. We have successfully managed to overcome many of the misconceptions and inhibitions that were prevailing with regards to the notion of eLearning by implementing comprehensive, effective and all encompassing learning e-learning initiatives. We have always taken a strategic partnership approach with our clients. It is an approach that is mainly vendor agnostic focusing on what is best to achieve the specific learning objectives of our partners rather than selling them a long list of products and services. It is an approach that focuses on the learning rather than the ‘e’ using technology as a tool rather than as an objective on its own.

In order to make sure that technologically enhanced education continues to achieve its desired objectives, we continue to focus on building the capacity of the tutors. We have developed, jointly with well-recognised academic institutions, some very solid and comprehensive teachers’ education and capacity building programs that would ensure the overall success of any education enhancement initiative on any level.

BM. What do you think the future for the online learning space holds?
FK. Pure online learning has had its pitfalls in the past and will continue to lack the necessary momentum both regionally and globally. Our approach has been more focused on hybrid (blended) learning and this is where the majority of the effort will continue to be. It is not about the new technologies developing as much as it is about our ability to cope with such technological developments. Our focus on capacity building, teachers’ education and strategy development will ensure just that.

Fadi Abdul Khalek is the President and CEO of UKS, one of the leading e-learning organisations in the Middle East with extended operations in Europe, Asia and North America. Prior to joining UKS, Khalek had more than 12 years’ experience in both academic and corporate education and has been involved in a variety of research, development and implementation of various knowledge based technologies. More recently, he has been spearheading UKS’ efforts in the research and development of innovative and advanced learning technologies that are capable of transforming education into the 21st century and beyond. To contact him please telephone +971 4 3910171 or email fakhalek@uks.ae.