Galway, Ireland – 30th August, 2008 – Learn Skills, the web-based skills and compliance training company is delight to now partner with the English-based company ILX Group, a major player in the UK market with offices in the UK and USA. The ILX Group is an AIM-quoted company delivering multimedia and classroom courses in ITIL, PRINCE, MSP and APM areas.

In particular this partnership is focus on delivering to the Irish market the award winning multimedia training courses developed by ILX Group, with a particular focus on Business Basics for SME managers, which is aimed at improving managers financial awareness and understanding.

ILX Group Best Practice is an Accredited Training Organisation (ATO) and an Accredited Consulting Organisation (ACO) delivering accredited training and consultancy services in the following areas:

• Programme and Project Management (PRINCE2™, MSP™, APM, ISEB)
• IT Service Management (ITIL®)
• Risk Management (M_o_R)
• Business Finance (Finance for Non-Financial Managers)

ILX Group is the first company to present a worldwide multimedia course in ITIL version 3.0. The course can be delivered via CD-ROM, Network, Internet or Intranet, allowing the user flexibility to study at their own time and pace.  Using the interactive e-Learning method costs are significantly reduced and pass rates are increased compared to classroom training. “We’re really glad that ILX Group decided to collaborate with our company to deliver in Ireland their advanced training solutions; the quality of the ILX’s training courses is so high and extensive that the benefits of this courseware will soon be felt right across the Irish market amongst all levels of business leader”, said Sean Griffin, Co-Founder of Learn Skills.

These courses shall be available both on an individual basis or as part of a bundle purchase for large numbers of users and courses via the Learn Skills LMS.

Without a doubt, today’s world is knowledge-based and depends on the rapid exchange of information. Countries that are equipped with the technology and knowledge to participate in the new electronic world are major players in its socio-cultural and economic developments. Education is changing, too. With the advent of multimedia technologies and the Internet, it is now possible to reach people who would otherwise have no access to certain courses or educational opportunities.

Electronic learning, or e-Learning as it has come to be known, makes use of the Internet and digital technologies to deliver instruction synchronously or asynchronously to anyone who has access to a computer and an Internet connection.

By some estimates, between 800,000,000 and 1,500,000,000 people world-wide understand English. Approximately 350,000,000 people use English as their mother tongue (mainly in the United Kingdom, the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, and South Africa). Some 400 million use English as a second language (in countries such as Ghana, Nigeria, Tanzania, Pakistan, and the Philippines). At least another 150 million people use English with some degree of competence. Furthermore, it is an official language in more than 60 countries (Crystal 1992, p.121). With such a large number of people using English, it is not surprising that English has become the lingua franca of the modern world.

In the current state of affairs, the global dominance of English in commerce, science, and technology has created the need for an ever increasing number of people to learn to communicate in the English language. There is a market demand for English courses on a global scale, and the English language teaching industry is thriving.

As English is experienced across different linguistic contexts, it may be experienced primarily as a language of education, or higher education, as well as in official contexts, popular culture, and the local vernacular. It may be regarded as a language of social and economic advancement, or it may be seen as an imposition or a necessary evil. However it is seen, the English language is used across the globe in countless contexts to very different effects.

Thus, proficiency in English is seen as essential for participation in the global arena, particularly in the economic domain, in which transnational corporations conduct business and trade beyond the national borders. In addition, the global spread of the English language is further facilitated by American media products of mass communication such as videos, music, news, magazines, TV programs, and so on. The dominance of English on the Internet reinforces the flow of international information in English, and affirms the structure of global communication. English is the most widely used and taught language in the world, and it is accepted easily almost anywhere.

Second-language acquisition and intercultural learning can be greatly facilitated through e-Learning. At present, e-Learning is itself becoming an important global business not only in the commercial sector, but also in the support that national governments are giving to educational institutions to increase their export income. There is a drive for change brought on by technological innovation to which governments and institutions of higher learning are responding at a rapid pace.

Learn Skills aims to address these needs outlined above through the provision of web-based language learning in English initially, and then to expand this range.

Courtesy: In Global Peace Through The Global University System, 2003 Ed. by T. Varis, T. Utsumi, and W. R. Klem, University of Tampere, Hameenlinna, Finland