Can digital data provide an additional data basis for educational reporting? The potential of search portals for continuing education programmes

Digitisation has increasingly become a feature of education. Educational policy, too, has increasingly focused on digital processes and structures. Digital data opens up opportunities to improve the governance of continuing education given the inadequacy of existing statistics in the field of continuing education and training (CET). In this paper we use the InfoWeb Weiterbildung (IWWB) to demonstrate how CET search portals could be used as a data source to map available supply of CET. Using trends in CET delivery formats (online vs. face-to-face) and the regional distribution of offers as examples, potential practical applications of digitally-sourced data are illustrated. Requirements and limitations are discussed and research perspectives are drawn.