Welcome Message from H.E the Vice-Chancellor
Dear Participants,
In the ongoing efforts of the UAE to lay the foundation for a new post-oil era, the role of education and capacity building remains and will remain central, even through difficult times of economic crisis. His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, UAE Vice-President, Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai, declared in the Wall Street Journal: “Nearly 1.5 billion people live in our neighbourhood, and more than 50% of them are under the age of 25. In the Arab world alone, some 80 million young people -- out of a total population of 300 million -- are seeking jobs. I look at these young people as extraordinary resources for nation-building. If we can take our vision beyond Dubai, I think we can save a lot of young people from humiliating unemployment, from becoming extremists. Education and entrepreneurship are the twin underpinnings for building a safer world. With these two institutions, we'll have fewer angry young people, fewer frustrated youths ready to embrace radicalism because they have nowhere else to turn”.
Last year saw a major evolution of our institution, from eTQM college to Hamdan Bin Mohammed e-University, with the declared ambition to prepare a new generation of highly qualified and exceptional educators technologically enabled and responsive to the needs of the diverse society of the 21st century. To achieve this goal, Hamdan Bin Mohammed e-University has invested a lot in human brainpower, taking knowledge from the best experts around the world. Time has come now to make the products of that brainpower widely available, and technology allows for this.
Increasing access, improving quality and reducing cost of education– all at the same time, would not be possible without the appropriate technologies. Technology has always made great contributions to increase and improve access to education, allowing to break the iron triangle of access, cost and quality that had constrained education throughout history.
Technology-enhanced education allows to overcome the insidious assumption, still prevalent today, that in education you cannot have quality without exclusivity. By creating good learning materials, we may have also avoided the trap of new educational technologies, that would be to focus on technological details rather than educational goals.
We hope that this will make us a priviledged engine of educational development in the region and in the whole Arab World, preparing people to walk the talk on access, and student-centred pedagogy.
H.E Dr Ibrahim Mahmood,
Vice-Chancellor
Hamdan Bin Mohammed e-University
