ELearning Boom in Colombia
The foundation of Colombia's leadership role in eLearning is a long-term strategy, including five-year funding programs, developed by the country's Ministry of Education. In 2007, the first program was extended for another five years due to the great success of the evaluation of the first phase.
Furthermore, in August 2007, an international seminar entitled "Quality in eLearning: State of the Art and Perspectives" was organized that emphatically demonstrated Colombia's commitment to join the leading eLearning nations. Initiated by the Colombian Ministry of National Education, the conference was a first-rate event: The speech of the Colombian Minister for Education Mrs. Cecília María Vélez White highlighted eLearning's importance for both national politics and policies in education.
The first keynote, by the German eLearning expert Christian M. Stracke, focused on the benefits of quality development and quality standardization for the improvement of learning opportunities. "I'm very pleased that a main result of the conference was Colombia's commitment to join the eLearning standardization committee SC36 to contribute actively to the important future eLearning standards", Stracke, who is also the WG5 Convener of SC36, commented. "This demonstrates the value and importance Colombia attaches to eLearning and standardization."
The seminar was a big success, and not only in Colombia. At the venue itself, around 1,600 participants observed the conference in parallel rooms and many registration requests had to be refused. In addition, the whole event was streamed via the Internet with free access, allowing the eLearning community worldwide to follow the discussion. The first positive comments and blogs were already posted during the presentations!