Echelon and St Martin’s College help boost entrepreneurial skills in North West England

Learning materials publisher Echelon Learning Ltd is collaborating with St Martin’s College Centre for Creativity and Innovation to provide online learning materials to the staff of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) in the North West of England under the ‘Into Enterprise Project’ (IEP).

The IEP, funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and the North West Development Agency (NWDA) and administered by St Martin’s College, aims to define the competencies needed in order to operate an SME successfully and then provide learning materials that support these competencies. These learning materials encompass self-learning solutions, best practice essays, and action lists.

The learning materials are made available via a website that forms part of an ‘enterprise portal’, provided by St Martin’s College and accessed via www.intoenterprise.com

Users register for the service and then have free access to all of the learning materials that it contains. These learning materials comprise learning programmes from the College and distance- and e-learning material developed by Echelon.

"St Martin’s College engaged us to help in this project after viewing our ‘Learning Matters’ website," said David Hill, Echelon’s managing director. "They liked the format of the site and felt that the wide range of business and management content met the needs of their SME clients perfectly."

Echelon’s website, www.learningmatters.com, which contains a virtual library of some 2,000+ downloadable, bite-size performance solutions, digest articles and toolkits, as well as an informative blog on e-learning related topics, is in the process of being enhanced to allow users to learn in ‘real time’. Some 500 of the Learning Matters modules are being updated to allow users to learn online, instead of downloading the learning materials for study offline.

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Released May 2007 on behalf of Echelon Publishing by BLP&PR

Media contact: Peter Muir Tel + 44 (0)1296 715228
Email: echelon@pmpr.co.uk

Sales contact: David Hill Tel + 44 (0)20 8568 1500
Email: david@echelonl.com

About Echelon Learning Ltd

Echelon Learning is a consultancy-led publishing house that integrates electronically-delivered knowledge and learning into the development of management skills and business performance.

Echelon Consulting spearheads the company’s service with the development of new content in meeting clients’ requirements. This is usually derived from analysing employee knowledge and learning needs captured during client learning programmes.

Where appropriate, Echelon Publishing then offers this new content to a wider audience by publishing the material in generic format. This is made available in the form of easy to use ‘learning nuggets’ and is complimented with business development information licensed exclusively from one of the market’s best-known providers, Bloomsbury.

Echelon e-Learning provides the electronic systems which enable content to be published, distributed and usage tracked, and offers work-based solutions to a global audience. Echelon’s blended learning based on a bespoke site populated with material selected to support specific courses, builds knowledge prior to the event and refreshes application when back at the desk.

About Echelon Publishing
Echelon technologies help organisations place solutions at people’s fingertips, whether solving everyday business and work-related problems or helping gain qualifications and continued professional development.
Echelon:
• Has a content management system enabling informational or learning material to be developed or converted into XML so that it can be published and distributed in text and/or via the web.
• Has a learning management system to provide ready access via the web to highly structured information, which is easily searched and retrieved, and whose usage can be tracked and learning logged.
• Publishes and/or reformats content for professional bodies and commercial organisations to help students and employees maintain or develop requisite skills throughout their careers.
• Supports people from the outset of their careers in working with professional bodies to develop and deliver the learning content required by students in preparing for examination.
• Frees up the knowledge and learning contained within a business so that people have ready access to these resources in helping them to solve problems or develop their careers.