EIfEL believes that it is time to take a closer look at the organic link between individual, organisational and territorial learning. Learning territories (regions, cities, districts) are a powerful framework for understanding and planning learning policies. Moving from a learning territory to an e.learning territory has very little to do with providing online courses: it is the ability to use relevant technology and methods to create and support local learning and employement networks, implement portals to provide the services required to bridge the gap between learning demand and provision, promote social inclusion and innovation.

A learning region is a region that is able to value its intellectual, human, patrimonial, social, industrial, agricultural and cultural capital.

To promote research in that field, EIfEL is involved in a series of projects related to learning territories:

·          SEEL (supporting Excellence in E-Learning) il looking at eLearning territories - digital learning territories, i.e. learning territories using digital technologies to increase their ability to be a true learning entity;

·          ReLL (Regional Network to Develop Lifelong Learning Strategies) that looks at lifelong and lifewide learning policies at regional levels and is part of a larger project supported by the European Commission:
R3L (Regional Life Long Learning)

"Regions are becoming focal points for knowledge creation and learning in the new age of global, knowledge-intensive capitalism, as they in effect become learning regions. The learning regions function as collectors and repositories of knowledge and ideas, and provide the underlying environment or infrastructure which facilitates the flow of knowledge, ideas and learning"

Richard Florida

“The current period of growth is thus characterized by a paradoxical consequence of globalisation in which the ever greater integration of national and regional economies into the global one accentuates, rather than minimizes, the significance of the local context for innovative activities. Analysts recognize that while the process of globalisation poses new challenges for regions and localities, it simultaneously creates new opportunities which arise from their unique capacity to serve as centres of learning and innovation.”

David A. Wolfe