Abstract:

As a research and extension tool of the Andalusian government, The Instituto de Investigación y Formación Agraria y Pesquera (IFAPA) is developing a range of research, technology transfer and training activities to promote the modernization of the Andalusian Agriculture, Fisheries and Food sector, and to guarantee the correct implementation of Common Agricultural Policy directives.

In this work we focus on IFAPA´s training program, especially its e-learning program. In the Agricultural sector, this kind of information and communication technology (ICT) based activities are quite uncommon. Therefore a general view of how IFAPA´s e-learning program is implemented might be relevant for professional adult trainers elsewhere.

E-learning at IFAPA started in 2006. Since then interactive contents have been generated for a range of topics, and different e-learning platforms have been used, hosted at several web servers. In 2010 we started to use Moodle at our own web server, giving to the platform administrator more autonomy and a wider range of tools and features.

In this paper we provide a summary of how IFAPA´s traditional training model was transferred to the e-learning platform, and analyze how the teaching and training activities have evolved since then. Special attention is paid to tracking the changing use and profile of the participants of the training activities, identifying which training programs are more useful, recognizing which training programs are being used most efficiently, comparing the evolution of institutional training versus specialized training, at the same time also identifying the causes of these changes.

Keywords:

Agriculture and Fisheries, e-learning platform, training programs.