learning - Academic Conferences Limited

Antonios Andreatos
The organisational social capital can be encoded in LOs stored in its databases.
It has to be continually enhanced and enriched, reflecting the company's effort to assimilate new
ICT and new knowledge.
The organisational social capital plus selected external LOs may form the basis of the educational
materials used to train newcomers and continually educate knowledge workers.
After proper learning needs analysis, an organisation investing in knowledge and ICT needs to design
and adopt a sustained continuing education plan. Several options appear (Fonstad & Lanvin, 2010),
ranging from formal post-graduate university education to informal in-house training designed and
offered by the organisation itself. In most cases, cost reduction policies make the use of proper OER
an attractive choice.
In order for an organisation to design its own in-house continuing education programme, a set of
scientific, pedagogical and quality and cost criteria have to be met. Fundamental prerequisites
include: the quality credentials of the course designers; the quality of the educational materials;
coverage of specific learning needs; correctness and efficiency. Additional issues regard the
effectiveness, efficiency and certification of such programmes.
After collecting a set of appropriate LOs meeting predefined criteria, selected LOs may be stored in
the organisation's databases to enhance the existing social capital. The use of a formal
characterisation of LOs in the form of a posteriori metadata will greatly facilitate their organisation,
search and retrieval process.
In conclusion, the use of open educational resources may enrich existing social capital and facilitate
intra-organisational eLearning and continuing education in a cost-effective way.
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