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kształcenia online oraz ukazuje konkretne inicjatywy skierowane zarówno do społeczności akademickiej, jak i do przedsiębiorców oraz ich pracowników.

Opracowania zamieszczone w kolejnych częściach poruszają problematykę doświadczeń polskich uczelni, unijnych projektów z tego zakresu, praktycznych przykładów i podejmowanych inicjatyw, metodyki oraz jakości kształcenia, a także stanowią próbę oceny i wskazania kierunków zmian dla rozwoju e-edukacji.

Mamy nadzieję, iż niniejsza publikacja będzie cennym źródłem informacji dla wszystkich zainteresowanych tematyką wykorzystania nowoczesnych technologii w kształceniu akademickim.

Marcin Dąbrowski, Maria Zając

There is no doubt nowadays, that education has become a key element in development of information society. Many universities create modern curriculums, well adjusted to the needs of knowledge-based economy - for the purpose of higher education, lifelong learning and profes-sional trainings - and this activity is a main factor of the Polish society development. No wonder, that the role of implementing ICT in education with regard to the forms of learning as well as to organizational aspects ofthe whole teaching process is growing systematically. As far as the rangę of educational applications of ICT is concerned one can easily spot a variety of forms offered by the universities - from supporting traditional ways of teaching to introducing totally new, fully interactive online courses. The European Commission e-learning activity and its attitude towards that process, defmed as "a use of new, multimedia technologies and the Internet to increase the quality of learning" indicates quite elear further directions ofefforts that should be undertaken by the member States. This applies to the university education and lifelong learning in particular.

The number of participants attending the first Polish conference "The development of e-learning in higher education of economics", which was held on 78^,h of November, 2004 in Katowice, Poland shows that the universities of economics, which the conference was addressed to, seem to be aware ofthis challenge. It was organized by the Foundation for the Promotion and Accreditation of Economic Education in cooperation with Universities of Economics from Kraków, Katowice, Poznan and Wrocław as well as Warsaw School of Economics. The book contains proceedings from that conference and lOadditional articles, submitted but not presented during the meeting. The content is enriched by the corporate e-learning descriptions and examples from abroad. Although the conference was aimed mainly at the universities of economics, it is worth to be stressed that the problems raised during the presentations are quite common for all kind of Polish universities implementing ICT in their educational offer.

The first part of publication presents main issues of e-learning both in Polish and International context. It also describes didactic aspects of online education and shows initiatives aimed at academics, entrepreneurs and their workers.

The articles published in other parts of the book describe examples of good practices of different Polish universities and EU projects they are involved in. Some other papers deal with the problems of methodology and quality of online education and suggest possible ways ofits further development.

We hope that the publication will be a valuable source of information for all, who are inter-ested in implementing ICT in higher education.