Learning materials publisher Echelon Learning Ltd is collaborating with St Martin's College Centre for Creativity and Innovation to provide online learning materials to the staff of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) in the North West of England under the 'Into Enterprise Project' (IEP).

The IEP, funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and the North West Development Agency (NWDA) and administered by St Martin's College, aims to define the competencies needed in order to operate an SME successfully and then provide learning materials that support these competencies. These learning materials encompass self-learning solutions, best practice essays, and action lists.

The learning materials are made available via a website that forms part of an 'enterprise portal', provided by St Martin's College and accessed via www.intoenterprise.com/

Users register for the service and then have free access to all of the learning materials that it contains. These learning materials comprise learning programmes from the College and distance- and e-learning material developed by Echelon.

"St Martin's College engaged us to help in this project after viewing our 'Learning Matters' website," said David Hill, Echelon's managing director. "They liked the format of the site and felt that the wide range of business and management content met the needs of their SME clients perfectly."

Echelon's website, which contains a virtual library of some 2,000+ downloadable, bite-size performance solutions, digest articles and toolkits, as well as an informative blog on e-learning related topics, is in the process of being enhanced to allow users to learn in 'real time'. Some 500 of the Learning Matters modules are being updated to allow users to learn online, instead of downloading the learning materials for study offline.