The APO’s e-learning courses have been well and injected new life into productivity promotion efforts. With the recent advances in IT in member countries, the e-learning courses provide dual advantages. First, they broaden the APO’s outreach; second, they allow outstanding performers to be identified and selected for multicountry, face-to-face advanced training courses to consolidate their learning.

The APO’s self-e-learning courses on the Balanced Scorecard course started in August 2008. Unlike other self-learning courses offered on the APO Web site, the course features a pre- and postcourse test to gauge the initial level of understanding and subsequent progress. A certificate is awarded to participants on completion of the course. Two thousand online students can be accommodated at any one time, and the course is available to all member countries. Around 650 people have registered for the courses so far.

Increased interest in the courses prompted the APO to improve them by changing the management system in July this year. e-Learning has recently been relaunched following a course update and system migration to a new server. “The new enhancements and the system migration will now allow a faster response to our users and future users. We will continue to develop our own internal capability with the self-e-learning program,” said Secretariat Industry Program Officer Chomprang Duangthip, who is in charge of the course.

The URL for the course has been changed to www.apo-elearning.org (now eapo-tokyo.org). Participants will also receive new IDs and passwords. Those who wish to participate in the course are advised to contact their NPO, since the APO only accepts applications nominated by NPOs. It will be available until early 2010, or when 2,000 users have completed the course