International Trade eLearning Suite for SMEs-InTeLS

What is the aim of the InTeLS project? 

International trade training is well established throughout Europe but tends to be targeted at specialist professionals in purchasing & marketing departments in large companies. More introductory level training for entrepreneurs, managers & staff in small companies is needed. The main aim of the InTeLS project is to improve access to training in international trade for staff & managers from a wide range of European SMEs. It is anticipated that games based approaches and e-learning materials & methods would appeal to, and help engage, SMEs more than traditional classroom based courses. 

What type of staff and businesses is the InTeLS project seeking to help? 

The international trade e-learning suite is specifically targeted at staff & managers in SMEs who are not trading abroad because of lack of knowledge of how to export & import and/or who have a poor understanding of conditions in foreign markets. In particular it is aimed at those who would otherwise be unlikely to attend traditional classroom style taught courses on international trade due to cost, time or physical constraints. 

Who are the organizations involved with the InTeLS project? 

The InTeLS project partnership of consists of eight organisations from seven different European countries. Together they span all the key stakeholders needed for a project such as InTeLS+ and have links into a wide network of SMEs, training companies, colleges, national / regional authorities & organisations which deal with SMEs & the skills agenda. All partners either already offer training to the target group or provide e-learning software for other training organisations which offer SME training.

The partners act as researchers, training materials providers, e-learning content developers & deliverers of the pilot training programmes with each partner taking responsibility for at least one of the major project activities:

§    Coventry and Warwickshire Chamber of Commerce lead, financially manage & co-ordinate all partner activities

§    The Lithuanian Development Agency are responsible for training content development;

§    Madrid based Business College Aliter direct the project’s research efforts;

§    Technology partner PixeLearning of the UK lead the technical effort to transform content into e-learning materials

§    Democenter of Italy are responsible for monitoring the projects’ quality control processes;

§   SME Association Företagarna of Sweden are responsible for exploitation activities

§   The Slovenian Chamber of Commerce (CCIS-IBIT) are responsible for dissemination activities;

§   Virtech lead on project testing, 

Who is funding the InTeLS project and for how long?

The initial four-years’ of the project have been partly funded by the Leonardo Programme during which time the project partners have developed a suite of e-learning training materials/tools & a computer based “Entrepreneurship” Business Game and validated the suitability of the InTeLS approach for a range of European countries and sectors.

In which languages can I use the InTeLS website?

The InTeLS  website, online training course and the associated InTeLS game have been translated and customised for seven partner countries from very distinct areas of Europe – UK, Spain, Sweden, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Slovenia and Italy – in order to determine its wider European relevance. In future the project partners hope to get more support from EU national authorities and the European Commission to cover even more languages.

What is the technology behind the InTeLS website and training materials?

The InTeLS project involves developing state-of-the-art features (e.g. animated simulations, computer gaming and e-learning) on technology platforms which will allow the end “product” to be relatively easily “tailored” by non-technical partners to cater for a variety of linguistic, cultural and sectoral requirements. This has involved the technical project partners in a considerable amount of “back-end” development that we believe has wider applicability offering the flexibility to adapt to the needs of a wide range of different sectors, languages, countries/regions and topics.

The project website and associated training materials has been developed by Bulgarian partner Virtech. They have used the CAKE development platform in order to make the translation and amendment/contextualisation of InTeLS materials as straightforward as possible so that new and existing project partners can make changes to the InTeLS website and materials without requiring the technical assistance of Virtech.