Continuing training designers and providers must have the ability to respond - with flexible and differentiated policies and models - not only to the demands of production systems for innovation based on transfers of technology but also to social expectations of cultural progress and professional growth. As a result among other, of EU stimulation action, promoters and providers of educational technologies are becoming increasingly interested in the "market" of primary social and work requirements. Today's great challenge for European scientific and technological research is to develop and disseminate theories methods and processes for continuing training which can raise the standard of knowledge and skills of EU citizens and help them enter and remain in an increasingly changeable and discontinuous labour market Job creation and basic culture, technological competitiveness and sustainable social development, fight against obsolescence of skills and creation of "fertile environments" for professional growth are the new reference paradigms for continuing training designers. This tendency can be demonstrated by observing how the supply of continuing training products including the more technologically sophisticated and specialised - is moving towards a gradual simplification of languages, a lowering of the cultural threshold for access and an enlargement of target groups. investment in educational technologies tends to be user friendly and propose ever wider cognitive contents, focusing less and less on the transfer of specific vocational know-how and more and more on building tailor-made learning paths on wide themes. These general trends in continuing training products are also a response to precise needs on the part of the training market and to the specific requirements expressed by users, such as: dissemination of instruments and service infrastructures (also with technological support) to try to lower the access threshold to these products and foster large and widespread use of them. development of network links among user groups through which to vehicle and exchange training opportunities and pedagogical material. train and disseminate guidance counsellors and facilitators for access and use of technologically very advanced continuing learning systems.
