The purpose of this study is to define what e-Learning consists of, its characteristics and the various barriers to it for SMEs and to verify, through a multiple case study, the extent to which Atlantic Canadian SMEs face the same barriers than larger organizations when they want to use e-Learning. The purpose of the study is also to present the different approaches, such as determine an overall learning strategy, develop a culture more conducive to e-Learning and upgrade the technological skills of the employees, that small and medium-sized businesses can use if they want to make a successful transition from traditional training to e-Learning to train their employees

Abstract-For centuries, traditional ways of teaching and learning were used around the world. Shifting from these well known traditional ways of teaching and learning to a more modern way -E-Learning -to adapt to the needs of the knowledge-based economies is requiring some adjustment on the part of businesses. One of these adjustments is to use e-Learning in the different phases of the training process. This research discusses the reasons which motivate SMEs to use or not to use e-Learning in the different phases of the training process.

Nowadays, the use of social media has become an important tool to introduce new products and services in the world. However, in some countries social networks are very important to show what the company is and what they are doing with their businesses, it means that they sharing everything with their customers, like products, services, goals, some cases they try to educate their public about the use of the product or service, among other things. When people started using social networks on the internet, these were conceived as a mean to communicate with relatives or friends. However, with time, the social networks have evolved to a point that they now allow people to use them to generate sales and increase the competitiveness of enterprises. The purpose of this research is to demonstrate the lack of training and knowledge about the use of social networks by local businesses and the barriers they face when they decide to use them as sales platforms, and to demonstrate the impact it could have on their businesses. Four SMEs located in Colima State in Mexico were studied, selected to be sufficiently successful and representative in terms of industry and size, for theoretical generalization purposes. These tourism SMEs stem from various sectors, such as: travel agencies, tour operator, hotel and restaurant. Data were collected through semi-structured tape-recorded interviews, ranging approximately one hour and a half each, with the owner-manager or the manager responsible for social media. Interview transcripts were then coded and analyzed following Miles and Huberman's (1994) prescriptions with the assistance of the Atlas.ti application. The results allow us to conclude that the investigated companies believe that the use of social networks is extremely important to be able to compete in the market. However, due to a lack of training, they were not able to implement properly the utilization of social networks in their companies.

Facing pressure from an increasingly competitive business environment, small and medium-sized enterprises SMEs are called upon to implement e-Learning strategies to support their organizational training and developmental efforts. The purpose of this study is to identify the barriers and constraints SMEs experience when they want to use e-Learning and to determine, through a multiple case study, if the barriers to e-Learning actually experienced by SMEs in Atlantic Canada are the same as those that larger organizations are experiencing, and if they remain the same after all these years. Another purpose of this study is to present different approaches, such as the need to develop an e-Learning culture in Atlantic Canada and Canada in general, to create greater awareness and promotion of e-Learning, to determine an overall learning strategy to upgrade the technological skills of the employees and the SMEs, that can assist SMEs in surmounting the barriers they face when they want to use eLearning.Keywords: Barriers, constraints, e-Learning, SMEs, training, . IntroductionSmall and medium-sized enterprises SMEs are considered a source of economic growth and are seen as a key sector for creating employment in many countries around the world. Consequently, training and learning are considered critical to SMEs growth in many countries. To this end, references [ , ] consider that in knowledge-based economies, a firm s investment in training and updating its employees skills is a key element of its growth. However, SMEs do not provide sufficient training mainly because they cannot spare time for employees to © 2015 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.attend external training programs and because internal training is too expensive. Therefore, SMEs should logically turn to e-Learning to provide training as the benefits associated with it are supposed to solve these problems. But the logic is not working. SMEs have not rushed to embrace e-Learning in order to train their employees. Why? What are the barriers and constraints they face?In Canada, particularly Atlantic Canada, SMEs have played an important role in the economic development in various ways and their contribution towards a healthy economy has been recognized. They are defined as businesses having fewer than employees and they represent the majority of businesses [ ]. They are the fastest growing segment of the economy, and are considered the foundation of economic development [ -]. Due to their great flexibility and adaptability, they represent the economy sector that creates the most employment [ , ] and they remain critical to the economic prosperity of the region as in other parts of the world [see, for example, -]. Yet, despite their great contribution to the region s economy, there are very few studie...

Facing pressures from an increasingly competitive business environment, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are called upon to implement strategies that are enabled and supported by information technologies and e-business applications. One of these applications is e-learning, whose aim is to enable the continuous assimilation of knowledge and skills by managers and employees, and thus support organisational training and development efforts through the use of Internet technologies. Little is known however as to the actual role played by e-learning with regard to the training problems faced by SMEs. A multiple case study of 16 SMEs in the Atlantic region of Canada, including 12 that use e-learning with varying degrees of intensity, was designed to explore this question. We observed the firms' training process in terms of training needs analysis, method selection, tool selection and evaluation, and ascertained how this process is impacted by their use of e-learning. E-learning is then characterised in terms of opportunity and feasibility for the development of SMEs and their region. 2 THEORETICAL AND EMPIRICAL CONTEXT Research on training in SMEs has been fraught with conceptual and methodological issues (Wong et al.,