Institute for Rural Management Chair for Farm Management and Marketing Dr. Lutz Laschewski Opportunities for ICT supported learning available in Europe An overview

Institute for Rural Management Chair for Farm Management and Marketing Dr. Lutz Laschewski Outline Background General Context –Rural areas, SMEs, ICT usage patterns Politicial Institutions Policies to support ICT supported training General lessons

Institute for Rural Management Chair for Farm Management and Marketing Dr. Lutz Laschewski Background First part of common project Comparative Analysis of –structures of rural areas, the rural economy and ICT usage –Institutional context of Continous Education and Training (Political and Legal instituutions, training provision) –Policy mechanism to promote ICT supported CET 7 national reports

Institute for Rural Management Chair for Farm Management and Marketing Dr. Lutz Laschewski Structural Diversity and equally important SME sector structure, significance and economic situation of rural areas vary widely between European countries SMEs are integrating the vast majority of the labour force and generating large parts national gross value added. In some countries the almost all SMEs are micro-businesses and the self- employed. gap between possible access to ICT and its actual usage. technological infrastructure is very differently developed between countries, between rural and urban areas and between rural areas

Institute for Rural Management Chair for Farm Management and Marketing Dr. Lutz Laschewski Institutional Diversity of the relevant policy arena ICT supported CET is a complex policy arena characterised by multiple state actors (national, regional, local) with overlapping competencies Rural areas are rarely targeted by specific policies Need but also a lack of coherent strategies

Institute for Rural Management Chair for Farm Management and Marketing Dr. Lutz Laschewski Uneven provison Large companies in all countries seem to have developed ICT based CET for their employees and are among the driving forces ICT based CET for SMEs, in particular e- learning development seems to be generally at its early stages and only weakly developed (except)

Institute for Rural Management Chair for Farm Management and Marketing Dr. Lutz Laschewski Formats The more common ICT based CET has become the more divers content and training methods are. However, integrated approaches (blended learning) seem to be more common Small and in particular micro-businesses are rarely target by ICT based training courses. However, supply seems also to be very different due to sector and region.

Institute for Rural Management Chair for Farm Management and Marketing Dr. Lutz Laschewski Policy mechanism a variety of mechanism depending on the overall national strategy and targeting the specific national conditions have been applied. Only Poland does not seem to have yet developed specific tools to promote ICT based CET. While the focus in Greek and Spain has been very much on the development of the technical infrastructure in the other countries the focus has been laid on content development.

Institute for Rural Management Chair for Farm Management and Marketing Dr. Lutz Laschewski Main focus of cases studies The provision of technical infrastructure and affordable Internet broadband access in rural areas spreading of basic ICT skills and the development of useful training material and content dissemination of information about ICT based CET is regularly applied.

Institute for Rural Management Chair for Farm Management and Marketing Dr. Lutz Laschewski Main Issues ICT supported CET is still in its early stages remaining technical infrastructure gap between urban and rural areas The usage of internet is growing rapidly, but still large parts of the population and SMEs seem not to make use of ICT in particular in the field education and training A wider political strategy that considers technological, social and economic issues as well as content development of ICT based training solutions is required to cope with the specific needs of rural SMEs and their employees