E-LEARNING, AS A STRATEGIC TOOL FOR COMPETENCES DEVELOPMENT PROCESS

In the current complex economic environment, human capital is seen by countries and by business organizations as a key factor for competitiveness. Taking into account the globalization phenomenon, the information technology revolution and the world economic crisis, people need to evolve quickly, for achieving sustainable growth. A rapid way of evolving is through learning. Technological boom placed e-learning in an important position among today educational elements. This paper underlines the importance of e-learning in professional competences development, stretching the way in which these competences are served efficiently when the e-learning system is built on a reliable knowledge base. Semantic nets and concept space graphs play an important role in model design for such a knowledge base. Applicability of knowledge base construction is immediate in skills management systems, knowledge systems or certification systems owned by various professional institutions. The paper emphasizes the usefulness of such a base within a company: employees' competence are checked with test instruments from e-learning environments, and then mapped into a semantic network. Thanks to semantic computability properties of such a network, the amount of available intellectual capital can be quickly calculated for each project developed by the firm. Online tests from e-learning platforms respect the conceptual structure of domain knowledge base, adapt to employee's profile and to employer's necessities also. The paper identifies an effective way of managing professional skills and competences, achieving the desired competitive advantage.