eLEARNING - A CHANCE FOR SMALL AND MEDIUM SIZED ENTERPRISES

eLearning through its flexibility and facility of access is seen as a major enabler of lifelong learning (LLL), as a catalyst of change and a chance for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to improve their business and to integrate into European market. But so far the eLearning in the context of vocational educational training has been mainly adopted by large enterprises, while only little activity can be observed in SMEs. The question arises what the chances and challenges for SMEs are and what is the experience with its usage. In this paper after a presentation of key issues in eLearning chances and challenges of eLearning for SMEs are discussed and experiences are exemplified by three EU-funded eLearning projects. The focus lies on the ongoing project ARIEL - Analysing and Reporting the Implementation of Electronic Learning in Europe - coordinated by the Institut Arbeit und Technik (IAT).

eLEARNING

eLearning through its flexibility and facility of access is seen as a major enabler of lifelong learning (LLL), as a catalyst of change and a chance for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to improve their business and to integrate into European market. But so far eLearning in the context of vocational educational training mainly has been adopted by large enterprises, while only little activity can be observed in SMEs. The question arises what the chances and challenges for SMEs are and what are the experience with its usage. In this paper after a presentation of key issues in eLearning chances and challenges of eLearning for SMEs are discussed and experiences are exemplified by three EU-funded eLearning projects. The focus lies on the ongoing project ARIEL - Analysing and Reporting the Implementation of Electronic Learning in Europe – coordinated by the Institut Arbeit und Technik (IAT).

eLEARNING - EINE CHANCE FÜR KLEINE UND MITTLERE UNTERNEHMEN

eLearning wird durch seine Flexibilität und Zugänglichkeit als bedeutendes Instrument für die Implementierung lebenslangen Lernens (LLL) angesehen. Es kann für kleine und mittelgroße Unternehmen (KMU) einen Katalysator des Wandels sein und bietet damit die Chance zur Verbesserung der wirtschaftlichen Leistungsfähigkeit. Darüber hinaus kann eLearning dazu dienen, die Integration von KMU in den europäischen Markt zu fördern. Bis jetzt wird eLearning im Rahmen der beruflichen Aus- und Weiterbildung jedoch nahezu ausschließlich in Großunternehmen genutzt, während es in KMU allenfalls eine marginale Rolle spielt. Im ersten Kapitel dieses Artikels wird auf den Perspektivenwechsel in der beruflichen Aus- und Weiterbildung eingegangen. Im Anschluss daran werden die zentralen Elemente von eLearning vorgestellt (Kap. 2). Die mit eLearning verbundenen Chancen und Herausforderungen für KMU diskutiert (Kap. 3). Abschließend wird auf Erfahrungen mit eLearning in der Praxis am Beispiel von drei EU-finanzierten Projekten eingegangen. Das Hauptaugenmerk liegt dabei auf dem laufenden Projekt ARIEL -Analysing and Reporting the Implementation of Electronic Learning in Europe -, das vom Institut Arbeit und Technik, Gelsenkirchen, (IAT) koordiniert wird.

Not for Designers: On the Inadequacies of EU Design Law and How to Fix It

Design rights represent an interesting example of how the EU legislature has successfully regulated an otherwise heterogeneous field of law. Yet this type of protection is not for all. The tools created by EU intervention have been drafted paying much more attention to the industry sector rather than to designers themselves. In particular, modern, digitally based, individual or small-sized, 3D printing, open designers and their needs are largely neglected by such legislation. There is obviously nothing wrong in drafting legal tools around the needs of an industrial sector with an important role in the EU economy, on the contrary, this is a legitimate and good decision of industrial policy. However, good legislation should be fair, balanced, and (technologically) neutral in order to offer suitable solutions to all the players in the market, and all the citizens in the society, without discriminating the smallest or the newest: the cost would be to stifle innovation. The use of printing machinery to manufacture physical objects created digitally thanks to computer programs such as Computer-Aided Design (CAD) software has been in place for quite a few years, and it is actually the standard in many industrial fields, from aeronautics to home furniture. The change in recent years that has the potential to be a paradigm-shifting factor is a combination between the opularization of such technologies (price, size, usability, quality) and the diffusion of a culture based on access to and reuse of knowledge. We will call this blend Open Design. It is probably still too early, however, to say whether 3D printing will be used in the future to refer to a major event in human history, or instead will be relegated to a lonely Wikipedia entry similarly to ³Betamax² (copyright scholars are familiar with it for other reasons). It is not too early, however, to develop a legal analysis that will hopefully contribute to clarifying the major issues found in current EU design law structure, why many modern open designers will probably find better protection in copyright, and whether they can successfully rely on open licenses to achieve their goals. With regard to the latter point, we will use Creative Commons (CC) licenses to test our hypothesis due to their unique characteristic to be modular, i.e. to have different license elements (clauses) that licensors can choose in order to adapt the license to their own needs.”