The Influence of Adult Learners' Self-Directed Learning Readiness and Network Literacy on Online Learning Effectiveness: A Study of Civil Servants in Taiwan (Report‪)‬

Introduction With the relentless advance of Internet technologies, online learning has gained greater attention not only from schools and private organizations, but also from the public sectors. Governments around the world realize that maintaining a dynamic and effective workforce is of extreme importance in facing increasing levels of global competition; thus, ensuring that civil servants' skills and knowledge are continually updated and refreshed has become a serious and urgent issue (Bose, 2004). Online learning has become a favorite choice for providing training and development needs in government organizations because it provides a cost-effective and timely learning vehicle to meet the need of continuous education and training for the civil servants working at different locations (Combs, 2002; Shinkareva & Benson, 2006). Many developed countries have already established online learning portals specifically for training the large number of civil servants, such as the Virtual School at the United Kingdom's National School of Government, the United States' Federal Government's GoLearn, the Canadian School of Public Service's Campusdirect, and Singapore's Civil Service College's Open Academy. In Taiwan, the Civil Service Development Institute and Regional Civil Service Development Institute also launched online learning portals for civil servants at central and regional governments based on the framework of the National Science and Technology Program for e-Learning. All civil servants are required to take at least five hours of training courses through an online format each year (Taiwan Central Personnel Administration, 2007).