Abstract:

The increasing use of Information and Communication Technologies has made possible the emergence of new learning tools as a response to the needs of modern society, assuming in this sense an increasingly dominant role in education and training. E-learning is nowadays considered a worldwide mean of knowledge dissemination, and has been progressively recognized as a complement to traditional training systems. Therefore, and bearing in mind the importance of this modality within the existing professional training structures, the purpose of this study is to contribute to the modernization of the continuous training of magistrates, through the design of an educational model of distance learning. Thus, this study takes place in Portugal, from 2014 to 2017, in the Center of Judicial Studies (CEJ), addressing a very specific population: the Portuguese magistrates.

This study addresses the following research questions:
i) what needs and interests are associated with the implementation of a model in the field of continuing training of magistrates;
ii) what features must be found in such a model;
iii) what is the level of adequacy of the proposed model to the context and the target audience.

A pragmatic paradigm of research was adopted and mixed data was collected, within a sequential exploratory design approach. The results collected from online questionnaires, between May and June of 2016, are presently reported. The questionnaires were answered by 133 magistrates enrolled in different training courses offered by the CEJ in 2015/2016. Based on the data analysis procedures it was possible to found evidences of the perception of usefulness, viability and pertinence of the implementation of a distance learning model in the magistrates continuous training, though the blended-learning approach was pointed out as the most appropriate option.

Keywords:

b-learning, distance learning, e-learning, professional training, magistrates.