IMPROVING PARTICIPATION AND COLLABORATION IN BUSINESS-ORIENTED e-LEARNING FOR SME’s

Abstract: Research carried out in different European and national projects shows thatthere is not that much e-Learning applied in small and medium sized companies(SME’s) and that most of the few activities undertaken are of rather poor quality.One possible solution is to involve SME’s into sharing knowledge and collaborationby building communities of practice and to develop business-oriented models oftraining to meet their needs. In this paper, the authors put forward a short analysis oftraining needs of European SME’s and the use of e-Learning and present communitiesof practice and business-oriented e-Learning models for SME’s which are goingto be developed using the LMS Moodle within a current European project.