Abstract:

We would like to present the E-Chance 2.0 e-learning environment that is being developed under the European project E-Chance 2.0 for Women Entrepreneurship. The project has been financed by European Commission under the Leonardo da Vinci Transfer of Innovation sub - programme and is formed by 7 highly experienced European partners, coming from Spain, Czech Republic, Italy, Latvia and Romania.

To present briefly the project idea, the pool of female entrepreneurial talent is still underexploited in the EU: Women participation in self-employment has modestly increased since 1995 and amounted to 28 % in the EU-25 in 2003 (Benchmarking enterprise policy, 2004). As female labour market participation in general has made good progress, approaching the 60 % target, self-employment has continued to be an option for comparatively few women. Within this context, the project E-Chance 2.0 for Women Entrepreneurship aims at the inclusion of women into knowledge society: attending new ICT developments and practices and current entrepreneur needs. Thus, the project is aimed to train on technologies based on web 2.0 for using in entrepreneurship processes. The training activities are addressed to develop skills and capacities in order to improve the inclusion in the knowledge society. In addition, the acquisition of the skills and competences will facilitate personal development and competences for life (as creativity and innovation).

E–chance 2.0 for Women Entrepreneurship project will transfer the main idea of E-chance project aimed at training women on ITCs for improving their employability. As a final outcome of the project, a training platform based on web 2.0, combining elements of formal and informal training and creating blended e-learning environments, will be developed providing women entrepreneurs with a set of basic skills and capacities regarding the web 2.0. What is more, apart from the training course and interactive training contents, the e-learning environment will also include a handbook and e-learning methodology. A handbook will be designed to support the motivation of women entrepreneurs to use various tools based on web 2.0 for their both professional and personal activities to enable them the work and to save them time and bring concrete examples from partners´ countries, as well as show how various tools can be useful for business of women and for the personal development.

The e-learning methodology will combine gender methodology. In order to meet the women entrepreneurs training needs, the analysis of women entrepreneurs needs regarding the use of web 2.0 tools has been already carried in project partners’ countries. The analysis stage consisted of desk research, as well qualitative methodology, combining expert interviews and focus groups with women entrepreneurs. For the conference, we would like to introduce with the E-Chance e-learning environment, presenting the developed training contents, as well as e-learning methodology.

Keywords:

Web 2.0, e-learning methodology, entrepreneurship.