The continuous development of the eLearning definitely has a powerful impact upon the educational systems of all levels. More and more universities, high schools, training companies, etc., continuously adapt their teaching systems to ICT era demands.

Not long time ago, those most involved in designing Internet-based courses were the programmers, soft developers, persons having technical abilities, anyway. By the passing of time, other professionals grew involved (including trainers and teachers, out of the desire to enter the ODL system), giving birth of a new profession: those who design and deliver Internet-based courses (Web-Based Trainers – WBT).

Their importance is increasingly higher, because, on one hand, the ODL systems advantages are more and more appreciated and, on the other hand, the Internet as resource for the new technologies and also for new learning methodologies, has a potential not exploited at full capacity. However, in order to develop high quality courses, the WBTs need “special” competences that have to be permanently updated. Two of these competences are critical: the technical competences (on using the technologies), and pedagogical (on approaches and methods available to a web-trainer). Moreover, they have to be continually up-to-date with all the innovation and findings in the field so that may access to new training opportunities.

The WBT project aims at creating the premises for improving the quality of the Internet-based courses at all levels, through:

• developing powerful tools for web-based trainers’ competence improvement on both on technical and pedagogical skills
• building a „wide open” virtual resource for WBT, where they could learn, share experiences, be continuously informed and updated and so on.

In other words, WBT WORLD intents to develop a flexible educational tool, supported by Internet and new ICT technologies that will enable WBT to better use the information and instruction necessary for designing web-based courses. Through its informational content (in the concrete form of the best practices in eLearning at European level, articles and periodical reviews, presentation of new technologies in the field, etc.) the WBT have the possibility of continually updating their knowledge with the most recent findings in the field and of enriching their experience.

The course packages, comprised in the platform, designed for the WBT specific needs, will contribute at raising the opportunities for their competences continuous development. On the other hand, the flexible and accessible character of the courses (organized on three difficulty levels) will raise the chances for access in an ODL-specific instruction, for larger categories of teachers and trainers, bringing this way a significant contribution at diminishing the differences between various institutions of education (schools, private universities vs. public universities) or between different area of Europe.

Furthermore, a self-developing, wide open virtual community of the WBT will be accessible to any professionals who wants to share his/her own experience, place articles, present demo modules, correspondence with persons sharing the same interests, etc, and that will certainly encourage their creativity, initiative and competitive spirit in this top area.

Through its existence, WBT WORLD aims at bringing a contribution to improving the web-based courses quality at European level, being in line with the EU politics and initiatives of stimulating the eLearning and specifically the web-based ODL learning system.

In structuring the trans-national partnership we’ve taken into consideration the partners’ work experience in spreading out European Community projects. Thus, there have been included 10 institutions from 7 countries. The Transilvania University from Romania, The University of Valladolid from Spain with university background; companies specialized in training and IT consultancy (Elite Training from Romania, Tempo from Czech Republic, Visiolink from Finland, European Centre for Educational and Training from Bulgaria, Ionian Technology from Greece, Infinity from Hungary) and consortiums (ECCA from Spain, WITEC – European network).

Project organization will take into consideration the implementation of a Work Breakdown Structure in seven distinct phases which will provide the means of obtaining tangible and easy-to-evaluate results.

In all workpackages, the project partners will assure and be actively involved in the research and target group needs analysis (workpackage 2), the evaluation of the Internet platform production (workpackage 3), the building of the informative and interactive section (workpackage 4), the development of Internet-based courses for WBT (workpackage 5), as well as the testing and evaluating of the WBT WOLRD site (workpackage 6).