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LIFELONG LEARNING STRATEGY FOREUROPELifelong learning Memorandum suggests that acomprehensive and coherent lifelong learning strategyfor Europe should aim to (Trapenciere 2004):• Guarantee universal and continuing access tolearning for gaining and renewing the skillsneeded for sustained participation in theknowledge society;• Visibly raise levels of investment in humanresources in order to place priority in Europe’smost important asset – its people;• Develop effective teaching and learningmethods and contexts for the continuum oflifelong and life wide learning;• Significantly improve the ways in whichlearning participation and outcomes areunderstood und appreciated, particularly nonformaland informal learning;• Ensure that everyone can easily access goodquality information and advice about learningopportunities through Europe and throughouttheir lives;• Provide lifelong learning opportunities asclose to learners as possible, in their owncommunities and supported through ICTbasedfacilities wherever appropriate.All strategic issues highlighted in the Memorandumare to be taken into consideration when developingparticular lifelong educational courses and programs.These courses and programs in most cases are aimed toenable a person to perform her/his particularprofessional activities more effectively (e.g., in shortertime, in higher quality using advanced decision makingprocedures or new social skills, etc). Therefore, in thecontext of lifelong learning, professional dimension ofthe education requires higher degree of attention than itis usual in traditional academic education.CONTINUING PREFESSIONAL EDUCATIONDEFINITIONTo gain a better understanding of the phenomenonof life long learning, the phrase "continuingprofessional education" can be sub-divided into itscomponents that helps to better comprehend its origins(Pöyry 2003):• Continuing...to go on with a particular actionor in a particular condition; persist; to existover a prolonged period; last;• Professional...of, relating to, engaged in, orsuitable for a profession; engaged in a specificactivity as a source of livelihood; performedby persons receiving pay; having great skill orexperience in a particular field or activity;• Education...the knowledge or skill obtained ordeveloped by a learning process;• Continuing education...an educationalprogram that brings participants up to date in aparticular area of knowledge or skills.Continuing professional education is clearly theprocess of engaging in education pursuits with the goalof becoming up-to-date in the knowledge and skills ofone's profession. This requires balanced considerationof both (1) educational and (2) professional dimensionsin the scale of time and place, when providing this typeof education.STEPS TO CONTINUING PROFESSIONALEDUCATIONThere are certain steps to continuing professionaleducation that should be highlighted (Weingand 1999):• Needs Assessment seeks answers to thefollowing questions. Who is the audience forthe program? What are the needs of thisaudience? What are the most appropriatelearning strategies to meet those needs?• Planning Objectives is the stage where what islearned from the needs is implemented incourse plan and course implementationspecification;• Developing is stage where Assessment istranslated into program. Consideration of howadults learn is also factored into the decisionsthat are made;• Evaluation of the educational event is both thefinal piece of one event and the first piece ofthose to come, as data is fed into the nextNeeds Assessment exercise. There are sixsteps to evaluating a learning activity: knowyour purpose(s) in evaluation, delineate whatyou need to discover, identify who knowswhat you need to discover, communicate whatyou need to discover to those who are bestable to inform you, gather the information,and relate the findings to your purpose(s).Evaluation is an essential ingredient instrengthening the quality of continuingprofessional education.Figure 1 shows inter-relationships between themodel for the course cycle (Corbiere and Choquer2004) and the steps to continuing professionaleducation described above.Interplay of different aspects of course developmentshown in Figure 1 and demand of frequent changes,due to the need to incorporate up-to-date professionalknowledge in the course, suggests use of methods thatAnnual Proceedings of Vidzeme University College “ICTE in Regional Development”, 200620