L-R: Martyn Farrows, Centre Director, Learnovate Centre; Richard Straub, Secretary General, European Learning Industry Group; and Martin Curley, IVI Co-Director, Intel Vice President and Director Intel Labs Europe

The Learnovate Centre and the Innovation Value Institute, two centres of excellence in learning within Enterprise Ireland and IDA Ireland’s Technology Centre Programme, joined forces in October  to discuss the challenges facing the education and learning industries at the European Learning Industry Group’s annual meeting.

Celebrating its tenth anniversary, the European Learning Industry Group’s (ELIG) annual two-day meeting was held in Dublin, hosted by the Learnovate Centre, Enterprise Ireland and Intel Ireland. The event brought together leading industry experts, policy-makers and academic specialists from across Europe to discuss the future of learning technologies and innovation in learning.

ELIG is an open industry group with members representing the full value chain of services, products and solutions to support and promote knowledge and learning advancement throughout Europe.

The theme of this year’s event was: “Towards the Next Decade of Innovation for Learning and Knowledge”. The meeting reflected briefly on the achievements within eLearning over the last decade and then brought into focus the opportunities that lie ahead.

The event provided an ideal opportunity to introduce the newly launched Learnovate Centre to a core audience within the learning industry.

Speaking at the opening of ELIG’s annual meeting, Dr Martyn Farrows, Centre Director of the Learnovate Centre said: “The Learnovate Centre is tasked with enhancing the competitive advantage of the Irish learning industry and this important event provides us with a great opportunity to discuss the challenges and opportunities of this with the key stakeholder groups.”

Gearóid Mooney, Director of ICT Commercialisation at Enterprise Ireland added: “The event provides a unique forum to focus the research agendas of two important technology centres in order to generate innovative opportunities and build the competitive advantage of Irish industry within the global eLearning sector.”