Taipei, Aug. 26 (CNA) Government planning and support is a critical role in e-Learning industry development, experts from Japan, Korea and Taiwan agreed on in an e-Learning international forum Saturday.
Korean government offered more help to the e-Learning industry and the investment showed promising result, as Korea was ranked fifth -- top in Asian countries -- globally in a 2003 e-Learning world ranking released by Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU).
Taiwan and Japan were ranked 16th and 23rd, respectively.
Starting in 1999, Korea's Ministry of Labor offered an 80% subsidy for workers' e-Learning expenditure, said Kim Young-soon, President of Korea e-Learning Industry Association. The program prompted an e-Learning fever among workers.
"It's the key reason why on-line learning surpassed traditional learning for the first time in 2004, " said Kim.
Korea's Ministry of Education also launched "cyber university" programs in 17 universities in 2000 to encourage e-Learning. There are more than 55,000 graduates already up to this year, Kim said.
In Japan, the government also set up and funded e-Learning programs in selected universities, said Toshio Okamoto, a professor at University of Electro-Communication.
More than 86.1% of Japanese corporates with more than 5,000 employees set up e-Learning programs, according to Japan's e-Learning white paper. "However, Japanese government should do more, compared to Korea and Taiwan, " admitted Hidekuni Komatsu, President of Japan e-Learning Consortium.
For Taiwan, the government also should do more, and it will, said Lin Li-chieh, Director of Taiwan's e-Park Development Center. A five-year plan is expected to be launched in 2008 to follow up the work of National Science and Technology Program for e-Learning.
Taiwan's e-Learning program will focus on bigger corporates, public servants and teachers and try to bring up the percentage of on-line learning from 4% to 30% in the future, Lin said.