On Thursday, the 12th June 2014, the Police Academy in Tacen hosted the first conference on e-learning in the Police. The authors of papers discussed the challenges of e-learning and related new pedagogical approaches, the development of e-learning, and the role of lecturers in further educating and training.

The event was solemnly opened by a welcome speech delivered by Tatjana Bobnar, MSc, Deputy to Director General of the Police, who among other pointed out that "today all employees of the Police have access to electronic long-distance learning known as EIDA environment". She expressed her hope and belief that the conference shall be an opportunity for acquiring new knowledge as well as exchanging views and experiences.

The papers' titles announced a cohesive content thread of the conference. In its initial part, the keynote lecturers, Suzana Strmšek Turk, PhD from Doba, Faculty of Applied Business and Social Studies Maribor, Viktorija Florjančič, PhD, from the Faculty of Management Koper, and Darko Ščavničar, PhD, from the Ministry of Defence of the Republic of Slovenia wondered how to modernise our national fifteen years of experience with e-learning with new pedagogical approaches. They also discussed the challenges of e-learning and specifically illustrated its practical value in the Slovenian Army.

In their contributions, the employees of the Police, Reimond Jeršin, MSc, and Borut Rozman from the Police Academy, Miha Ristič from the Ljubljana Police Directorate, and Aleš Grudnik from the Service of the Director General of the Police, thoughtfully considered e-learning in the Police from the perspective of "yesterday, today and tomorrow", especially its role with candidates for deployment in international civilian peace-keeping missions.

The participants learned that the environment for long-distance e-learning (EIDA) in the Police, which is available to all police units, has been successfully operating since 2010. They were surprised by the fact that in 2013 there were as many as 38,092 participants involved in trainings via the environment of EIDA, meaning that each employee of the Police on average attended almost five trainings.

Long-distance e-learning environment, accessible via the internet (EIDAZ), can be along with the employees of the Police and the Ministry of the Interior also accessed by other participants of trainings organised by the Police, for example by municipal wardens.

In the afternoon session of the conference the lecturers from the Police Academy, Andrej Ošlak, Silva Weiss Janžek and Alenka Švab Tavčar, invited the participants "to take their seats in e-classrooms of the Police Academy". Through their interesting performances they presented their roles in further educating and training in the Police, particularly in post-secondary study programme "Police officer". Aleksander Pur, PhD, from the Office of Informatics and Telecommunications spoke about the IT support to e-learning in the Police.

The lecturers also answered the question on the role of forums in e-learning. One of the lecturers emphasised the fact that the online forum is not a common public meeting place for socialising or "a city outdoors", as it was in ancient Rome, but is designed for various discussions and exchange of views.

Those who could not attend the conference, or they will want to know some lecture in more detail, the electronic collection of conference papers is already available to participants who can read it in the conference e-classroom, and will be later accessible on the intranet.

Upon presentation of the papers a discussion on how to proceed with e-learning in the Police followed. It was skilfully moderated by Alenka Švab Tavčar, Deputy Chairman of the Preparatory Committee of the Conference, whose merit is that during the conference everything went on as it should. Evgen Česnik, MSc, Reimond Jeršin, MSc, Daniel Jug, Marko Fric, Aleksander Pur, PhD, and other conference participants took part in the debate with their interesting thoughts, comments and questions.

Coming to the end of the conference, Daniel Žibret, Director of the Police Academy and Chairman of the Preparatory Committee of the Conference, thanked the authors of papers presented at the conference, all participants for favourable attention, the members of the Preparatory Committee of the Conference, in particular its "driving force" Alenka Švab Tavčar for excellent organisation of the conference.

He pointed out that at the heart of every good school is always a good teacher, while modern technology is indispensable support to good teaching. With the words "See you next year at the second conference on e-learning!", the director announced that the conference will not be only a flash in the pan.