Increasingly e-learning is becoming one of the pathways of learning. People who act as mediators of such learning processes usually have not received a formal recognition for what they are doing, neither for their pedagogical nor for their organisational competence in such a context that may vary from dedicated online or telecentres to departments of private companies or public institutions with corresponding functions. Besides their pedagogical tasks as facilitators of a learning process with varying contents and contexts, they would need competencies to work in or even manage the corresponding technological structure and organisational establishment. Partly as a result of three different projects in the Lifelong Learning Programme context (VET4e-Inclusion; Key Competences 4 all; eScouts for Intergenerational Learning), in Spain (Catalunya) and Italy (Toscana), such a profession of what we have come to call eFacilitator in English has been formally accepted as official denominations of the corresponding profession: “dinamizador del espacio TIC” (dynamizer of the ITC space) in Spain, and “addetto alla communicazione, alla promozione di servizi/prodotti di una struttura pubblica o privata e alla facilitazione di servizi telematici” (person working in communication, promotion of services/products of a public or private establishment and in facilitating online services). A similar process has been initiated in France. In Bulgaria, the new profile seems to be linked to the functions of libraries and promoted as an add-on competence. Projects in further countries are under way to foster such processes of advanced acknowledgement of eFacilitators.

While the Italian profile of this new profession remains relatively general covering all sorts of communication, promotion or online-facilitation services, the new Spanish standard is fully dedicated to online facilitation encompassing the complete pedagogical, technological and organisational/managerial context of online or telecentres. The French efforts point in the same direction as the Spanish profile.

http://www.efacilitator.eu/wordpress/ http://www.keycompetences.eu/wordpress/ http://escouts.eu/