The World Bank Group's International Finance Corporation (IFC) is hosting an online international forum series on private higher education, produced by LearningTimes.

LearningTimes has created a special IFC community site to act as the online home for the online forum series. The initial forum took the form of a debate on the globalization of education. The debate had two parts – a live online debate from The World Bank, and an online forum for pre-event discussion on the globalization of education. The debate occurred "live" for World Bank delegates in Washington and simultaneously was webcast out to online participants around the world. As onsite moderator LearningTimes producer Paul Stacey asked the debaters to address questions from the pre-debate online forum and fielded questions from onsite participants. Another LearningTimes producer fielded and posed questions to the debaters from online participants.

The debate featured John Dawkins, Former Minister of Education for Australia, and Terry Ryan, Director of the African Centre for Economic Growth. Subsequent IFC Form Series webcasts have been produced by LearningTimes on such topics as Student Loan Schemes for Private Tertiary Institutions, and Selecting an e-Learning Platform.

[ See official press release ]