Renay Rampersadh, Education Manager at HPE South Africa
from DION HENRICK in Cape Town
CAPE TOWN, (CAJ News) – THE opening of a new Learning-as-a-Service Platform is a leading global example of how digital learning is exploring access to education and skills.
Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) has introduced the platform, providing 30 days free access to anyone that registers before the end of May 2020.
The HPE Digital Learner Platform offers about 5000 hours of training across numerous modules.
Renay Rampersadh, Education Manager at HPE South Africa, said as a prominent global edge-to-cloud Platform-as-a-Service provider, HPE was acutely aware that coronavirus (COVID-19) had increased the pressure on technology companies to innovate ever-more effective remote operability.
“COVID-19 has not only cast the demand for remote capability into stark relief, but has also highlighted the shortage of skills currently facing companies in the rapidly evolving technology sector,” Rampersadh said.
According to the company, when the COVID-19 lockdown was lifted, things were unlikely to return to normal.
Millions of South Africans, HPE stated, will have learned that activities which previously needed to be conducted in person can be accomplished – much more quickly and efficiently – remotely.
A key appreciation that many South African students or families with school-going children will take with them will be a new understanding of – and demand for – online learning.
In building out this education platform, HPE stated it had discovered a shift in the culture of how people preferred to learn, especially among younger people entering the workplace for the first time.
Half of today’s workforce is comprised of millennials, according to the company, and by 2025 the proportion is expected to be 75 percent.
“In short, millennials thrive on digital learning, especially if it is flexible enough to accommodate different speeds, schedules and learning preferences,” Rampersadh said.
The HDE platform provides 30 days free access to the HPE Digital Learner Platform for registrations before the end of May.
“It offers South Africans the opportunity to use COVID-19 isolation to develop new skills to meet the challenging and rapidly evolving economy,” Rampersadh said.
“I hope that exposure to the platform, even if people merely take a look, will help embed a culture of continuous independent learning as South Africans re-skill for success in the fourth industrial revolution,” he concluded.
– CAJ News