HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS IN CROATIA E-LEARNING STRATEGIES

Education institutions in world today, especially in the domestic environment of the Republic of Croatia, are situated in an extremely dynamic environment of curriculum changes, educational programs and outcomes that their final student product -potential employee must have. The strategy of education institutions, especially higher education, may be more important than ever because of the above mentioned impacts, but also due to the growing foreign competition in the field of education. A large number of papers have been written on the importance of introducing elearning into higher education systems, however insufficient attention has been devoted to the strategies and plans for implementation and realization of electronic learning systems. The neglect of the plan to apply modern methods of education can cause long-term major challenges in their realization. Similarly, many direct and indirect variables affect the operations of modern companies, which an entity must successfully balance to achieve optimum management. Every company is inevitably obliged to define its own strategy when trying to predict trends in business, rises and downfalls, but also pursue the desired mission or vision of a company. It is quite clear that the plan, strategy, and then realization are extremely important in both of these environments. Therefore, the principal objective is to identify which elements of business strategy development are adequate in the preparation of strategic documents for e-learning in higher education. In this paper, authors have endeavoured to link the theoretical concept of strategic planning and decision making to practical implementation of e-learning system. The research at the level of Croatian higher education institutions will include a review of the existence of such strategies, their analysis elaboration and their potential developmenttoo. Likewise, depending on the options, a comparison of similar strategies in the EU and the world will be made. As a desired final result, a survey of the current state of the e-learning strategy as well as guidelines for the better preparation of such materials will bepresented.