Upskilling imperative for UAE society

Dubai - The outbreak of Covid-19 has proved that digital transformation is a must for every business.

The UAE has proved that upskilling is not just a priority for businesses, but imperative for the entire country, said Anthony Tattersall, vice-president for Emea at Coursera.
"The outbreak of Covid-19 has proved that digital transformation is a must for every business and customer needs are changing radically. Companies who fail to evolve, will experience risks," he said.
To step up digital transformation efforts, the UAE has launched nationwide and governmentally-funded digital transformation programmes, and these are driving positive results as the nation jumped from third to second position in in the Coursera Global Skills Index for technology skills in the Middle East and Africa, and fourth regionally for data science skills this year.
The Abu Dhabi School of Government, which is the government entity responsible for overseeing and planning the learning and development of all Abu Dhabi government employees partnered, with Coursera to upskill more than 60,000 government officials in cutting-edge skills like data science, artificial intelligence and
digital transformation.
The unprecedented scope and scale of this public-private initiative signals that upskilling is taken very seriously across the entire country.
"Remote learning is just the start of a long-term digital transformation of higher education," said Abdulla Almuhairi, vice-president of Shared Services at the Higher Colleges of Technology, the largest higher education institution in the UAE.
Coursera announced free versions of Coursera for Campus and upgraded features to address the critical and long-term needs of higher education worldwide. New features allow universities to deliver academic integrity for credit-bearing online learning, improve student employability, and author private courses.
The announcement builds on the momentum of the Campus Response Initiative, which was launched in March to give students and faculty free access to Coursera for Campus during pandemic-related closures.
Jeff Maggioncalda, Coursera CEO, said: "The pandemic has been a catalyst for universities to make online learning the core of their student experience. We've grown from 30 universities using Coursera for Campus to over 3,700 in just seven months, and these upgrades will help them better deliver for-credit online learning and job-relevant skills for their students." - sandhya@khaleejtimes.com