eEDUCATION INITIATED IN CHINA - July 12, 2001 was the official launch date for a partnership effort of The Hartcourt Companies, Inc., California State U of Fullerton and Northern JiaoTong University of Beijing. The eEducation multi-discipline certificate and degree programs feature American-Standard Management and IT courses for Chinese entrepreneurs, and are taught by California State U instructors. Harcourt is providing the classrooms. Eventually these programs, along with MBA program, will be Webcast to students throughout China. For more information visit: http://www.hartcourt.com

ARMY'S NEW eLEARNING INITIATIVE - According to analysts, the Army's new eLearning initiative, eArmyU.com, may change how eLearning undertakings are accomplished. David Derman of Goldman Sachs Group tauts the five-year, $453 million initiative that was completed with consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers. Some 24 colleges and universities have teamed up to offer courses through the Army's eLearning portal. This initiative enables soldiers to get certificates and associate's, bachelor's and master's degrees online for no charge to the soldiers. According to Jill Kidwell, PricewaterhouseCoopers' program director for the program, it is anticipated that eArmyU can support 80,000 students and is expected to be available throughout the Army by 2003. (Washington Technology, 16 July 01)

IMPLEMENTERS MUST DRIVE THE eLEARNING AGENDA - On a recent trip to Ireland, Elliott Masie interviewed several CEO's of eLearning companies including Smartforce, WBT Systems and Thinq. It was intriguing that each of the CEO's felt that it was time for "implementing organizations," the actual companies deploying eLearning for their employees or customers to "take back the agenda for training and technology." The CEO's agreed that customers had to drive the agenda rather than be driven by the latest set of features or genre of tools announced by vendors. The training executives in the room, from 18 different countries, agreed that it was way too easy to default to the vendor's view of the learning world. The Masie Center believes that the agenda for eLearning must be driven by corporate strategies that are aligned with business needs and should be immune from the latest press releases or any new set of 3 or 4 letter terms heralding new software models for learning, tracking or management. (TechLearn Trends #207, 16 July 01)

IMS ESTABLISHES EUROPEAN FOUNDATION - IMS, a global consortium of more than 300 educational institutions, commercial entities and government agencies recently announced the founding of IMS in Europe - an independent foundation incorporated in the Netherlands that will serve the needs of eLearning organizations throughout Europe. A growing number of eLearning agencies, vendors, providers and universities are joining IMS in Europe to help develop technical specifications and involve the European eLearning community in their global use. Recently many of these organizations convened in Sweden and the UK to participate in an IMS Working Group on technical specifications for Digital Repositories. All of the specifications developed by IMS are available to the public without charge through the IMS web site at: http://www.imsglobal.org . (Syllabus e-News, Trends and Resources, 03 July 01)

ENTREPRENEURIAL EDUCATION AND TRAINING - To assist students in turning their work into new business ventures, several major European engineering and business schools have founded the Entrepreneurship Education and Training International Association. Participating institutions include: the Polytechnic University of Catalonia, Cambridge University, the Ecole des Mines d'Ales in France and Morocco's Al Akhawayn University, as well as the HEC business school in Paris. These institutions have an entrepreneurial infrastructure in place, including courses, incubators and organizations that help students form startup firms. The hope is that by working together, the institutions will be able to support: student exchanges, international networking events and research and development programs. Officials intend to work with business, although the corporate community is traditionally wary of entering academic efforts such as this unless it gains a stake in the work under development. (TheStandard.com, 25 May 01 - CIT INFOBITS June 01)