eLearning & Knowledge Management towards Life-long Education

Education will change tremendously within the next years. The significance of life-long learning and life accompanying education raises the need for new teaching and learning technologies. Although eLearning and knowledge management seem to fulfill the various requirements and much effort is being spent over years, the breakthrough is still missing in both fields. One reason for this is the fact that both fields are treated in an isolated manner. The purpose of this paper is to initiate a more integrated view of eLearning and knowledge management both in technical and in functional aspects and thus make use of possible synergy effects being visible then. The paper starts with the summary of individual key characteristics of eLearning environments and knowledge management systems (KM-systems). It then highlights existing coincidences and interfaces in order to prove that both worlds are not as far apart as they might seem. Finally a comparative analysis is performed and some relevant issues which contain the potential for relevant synergies are presented. The paper ends with the discussion of results.