The vision that guides and motivates ASBU Training Academy is directly inspired by the vision and the values to which ASBU itself has always adhered. Indeed, for 50 years, ASBU has always strived to remain a professional organization that best serves the interests of its members and meets their needs, transcending the political volatility that Arab States go through sometimes. ASBU provides a cooperation platform, and offers a package of constantly refined services by keeping abreast of the accelerated technological changes and the international best professional practices, especially in the public audio-visual sector.

Training in radio and television has been one of the cornerstones of the Union since the early 1980s when it established the Arab Training Center in Damascus. In the face of the difficulties that the Arab region has been confronted with since 2011, and the challenges that the public radio and television is facing across the globe and, in particular, the Arab world, the Union set up a new academy for continuous training in April 2017 at its headquarters in Tunis.

The Academy aspires to provide high-quality training in various radio and television-related crafts, thus becoming a regional reference in the audiovisual arena.

ASBU Academy provides opportunities for training and rehabilitation to all Arab audiovisual professionals, both public and private.
Training revolves around the following strategic axes:
New media
Engineering and production
Programs ,news ,sports and archives
Leadership and management .

Media Training Academy is a non-profit organization, whose basic mission is to promote Arab competencies in the field of audiovisual media and in the field of information in general, through continuous training.
The Academy aims to:

* Contribute to improving the quality of programs, news and services that the Union member organizations offer;
* Enable professionals working for Arab public or private organizations to keep pace with the technological developments that deeply influence the production, processing, broadcasting, archiving and reception of audiovisual programs and news;
* Present the best professional practices and experiences in the field;
* Provide a forum for the exchange of expertise and communication to Arab professionals;

* Monitor closely technological changes and their impact on professional practices, and adopt state-of-the-art systems.

In order to achieve the much sought-after excellence, the ASBU Media Training Academy upholds a set of fundamental values that light the way and guide the training activities it offers:
Professional rigor in designing, organizing and assessing training activities;
Transparency in choosing priorities and practices;
Adherence to the basics and ethics of the profession;
Permanent assessment and a culture of quality.
Permanent self-assessment enables the strict monitoring of the Academy’s performance, as participants themselves assess each training session by answering an anonymous questionnaire. The assessment covers the statistical part of the activity (participation, countries, and organizations), the educational part (content, trainers, format and length of the session, pedagogical method adopted, interaction…), and the logistical part (information, organization, services and relationships with the Academy’s team).

In order to keep pace with the changes, developments, and international best professional practices in the audiovisual field, the Academy set up a Consultative Council made up of nine Arab and foreign experts appointed as such. The Council holds a face-to-face meeting once a year, and meets a second time via audiovisual conference calls.

The role of the Consultative Council is to assist the Academy in implementing a training strategy and highlighting the significant changes in the field with which it must keep up.

The Union has a new fifth floor built at its headquarters in Tunis, reserved for the premises of the Training Academy. The floor consists of:
A television studio equipped with high definition cameras,
An IP radio studio with a platform for the automation, production and distribution using Winmedia automation system,
A multidisciplinary training room,
A multimedia room equipped with an advanced computer network.
An integrated news room will be added to reinforce the Academy’s resources.

The Academy relies on a limited team, to organize and conduct training activities. To implement courses, the Academy contracts with highly qualified trainers of renown in the Arab countries and elsewhere in the world. It also chooses cooperation partners from among the best professional training institutions in the world, such as the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) Academy, the French Audiovisual Institute (INA), the Asia-Pacific Institute for Broadcasting Development (AIBD), the Host Broadcast Services (HBS) Academy, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), and a number of specialized companies.
In addition, the Academy pursues a voluntary policy with regard to the training of Arab trainers by:
having one Arab trainer working with each foreign expert in the training,
organizing special training sessions designed for Arab trainers (TOT).

The length of training courses varies depending on the topic and the targeted audience.For the time being, the Academy offers three formats:
Short-term courses ranging from 2 to 3 days; they are generally Master classes,
Medium-term courses: 5 to 10 days,
Long-term courses: 3 to 4 weeks.

Decentralized courses are also delivered at the request of the organizations in accordance with their priority needs.
On the recommendation of the Union’s General Assembly, ASBU Academy holds courses for a number of member organizations with limited resources (e.g. Comoros, Djibouti).

The Academy adopts an interactive pedagogical approach, based primarily on the practical aspects of all the trades in the audiovisual sector (vocational exercises, best practices, case studies, use of simulation programs…) and on the contribution and professional experience of the participants themselves.
Training is provided either on a face-to-face basis or on a distance-learning basis or by blended training using simultaneously both ways .

The Academy grants training participation Certificates to the trainees who have attended at least 80% of the courses at the Training Sessions.

The Academy has launched on June 2019, a distance training platform that offers free training courses in the media and audiovisual fields.
Today, this platform offers free ten courses:
Mobile Journalism in Arabic and in English*
Basics in sound processing
Journalism Ethics
Marketing & Social Media
Artificial Intelligence at the service of audiovisual production
Data Journalism
Investigative Journalism.
News & Terrorism
10 Golden Rules for Editing.
This last Course will open in January 2023 and will be crowned with certificate of achievement (Open Badge).

Training Academy seeks to expand its reach and to intensify the spread of its activities, through conventional channels (regular mailing notifications to member organizations) as well as through modern technological means to enhance visibility: the Union’s website (Academy icon) and the Academy pages on social networks (Twitter and Facebook) covering the executed activities and announcing the upcoming sessions.

The Academy also took the initiative to distribute a periodical electronic newsletter that presents its current activities, with a three month survey on its executed work plan. This newsletter is sent to all member organizations and all trainees and trainers who participated and contributed in the Academy Training activities.

Media Training Academy has made it one of its priorities to seek to improve the organization, programs and services of Arab public audiovisual institutions, and to take its performance and its credibility to a higher level.
Keeping pace with the new media and with the technological changes that affect the professional practices in the field is also placed at the top of its priorities.

Beside the need to continuously upgrade and modernize its services, one of the biggest challenges the Academy is facing is to sensitize Arab organizations in general, and member organizations of the ASBU in particular, to the priority it attaches to continuous training and rehabilitation.
It is our hope that Arab organizations will participate more actively in training courses, and that an effective network of officials responsible for training inside Arab broadcasting organizations will be created, with which it is possible to establish communication on a regular basis.