February 4 - The GAC Corporate Academy (GCA) has entered the next stage of its evolution with the launch of its new 'E-Learning 2.0' platform - 'by GCA, for GAC'.
This marks the beginning of the second phase of the development of the Academy, an in-house corporate development initiative set up to offer professional development opportunities to GAC employees around the world in February 2007.
By refining the teaching materials offered through the GCA online learning management system, GAClearn, and streamlining third party content developers, the GCA is fine-tuning its courses to make them more relevant to their needs, more interactive, and responsive to changing demands.
Damien O'Donoghue, the Academy's general manager, explains that some of the initial GCA course material was provided by outside developers, using generic content. While valuable in establishing the initial phase of the learning system, those models had limited potential for social interaction and relevance to the GAC World. There was also an element of inflexibility, as content could not be changed, and naturally the added expense of purchasing the material from 3rd-party providers was an issue.
"Now, after nearly three years since the launch of the GCA, we are ready to move on to the next stage - a new model that lays the foundations for us to build in-house communities to spread learning across the GAC world, with the flexibility to adapt in response to feedback from participants ," he says.
