A Technology Enhanced Learning Case from Birth to Deployment: Critical Analysis of the ALaRI Intranet Platform

This paper aims at illustrating the necessities that led to the decision of building a technological learning platform for the ALaRI (Advanced Learning and Research Institute) academic institute, at University of Lugano (Università della Svizzera italiana), Switzerland. Following that, the paper will analyse the development of this platform, the difficulties met, the unforeseen events, the requested changes and modifications, pointing out the achieved successes, as well as the errors and failures occurred. The goal is that of learning also from the wrong experiences and not only from the best practice cases. In particular, what this article would like to put in evidence is how technology and communication are strongly joined and how only the good performance of both can contribute to provide the users of the platform with a really efficient and effective artefact enhancing the remote learning interactions. From this perspective, I will investigate how failures that are apparently of technical nature may actually stem from lack of communication, or misunderstanding and incomprehension, among the persons responsible of the development of the platform (the principal stakeholders/the decision maker, and the developers team), and also between them and the final users. The following loop stands out how the phases of design, development and use involve different actors, often with different backgrounds as well as different cultures, who should be able to collaborate together to realize an efficient and effective elearning platform. Fig. 1 General Overview E. Tomadaki and P. Scott (Eds.): Innovative Approaches for Learning and Knowledge Sharing, EC-TEL 2006 Workshops Proceedings, ISSN 1613-0073, p. 192-206, 2006. Figure 1, starting from the decision maker, shows the communication flows and the working groups taking place at ALaRI environment. Basically, it represents two principal loops: the first one describes a technical and locked loop, where the technical aspects of the intranet platform are defined and developed by the decision maker and the development team, taking into consideration the ALaRI actors’ requirements, their activities, and the specifications of the system. The second loop is wider, in the sense that decision maker, and also the developers, should consider the impact of the intranet release on the final users. This means to verify how the platform is really used, observing how the ALaRI actors interact with the intranet and moreover through it among themselves, and asking them explicitly through usability tests (task scenarios, interviews, and questionnaires) to get a feedback. The feedback from the final users should be of interest not only to the decision maker, but also to the developers in charge of the implementation of the platform. Then, further modifications and implementations should take into account what it went wrong and why final users are not satisfied. Sometimes it is the communication flow in place (or its lack) inside each one of the two loops and between the two loops themselves that has generated incomprehension affecting the optimal realization of the platform. According to this scheme (figure 1), it becomes necessary to learn to negotiate in order to reach a common agreement and arrive to a co-shared result, where it is clear that the final goal is the benefit of the entire ALaRI community and not only the personal or particular interest of one or a limited group. In the following paragraphs I will illustrate the ALaRI challenging approach, and how the ALaRI platform would enhance the remote learning, together with a brief description of the ALaRI institute, its mission, its environment, the principal actors and their roles. Then, there will be an analysis of the occurred risks about the ALaRI intranet development and its use. Further what did not work and why will be explained, providing also some general aspects from the occurred problems in this specific case. Some considerations about what it is possible to learn from this experience and how it is possible to benefit from the occurred failures will follow. The successive object will be instead what did work and the achieved successes. Finally a set of overall recommendations that can apply to other situations to achieve satisfactory results will complete the analysis. The conclusions will close my reflections. The ALaRI challenging approach The ALaRI institute is active from 1999 at the University of Lugano, Switzerland, with the aim of promoting research, education and training in the field of the embedded systems design, through the synergic interaction of three principal actors: European academia, American academia and international high-tech industry. Since 2000 ALaRI offers a master program in embedded systems design (the Master of Advanced Studies in Embedded Systems Design). This master program lasts one year, from September until July, and it finishes with the final workshop where the participants present their master research projects, developed during the year with the Critical Analysis of the ALaRI Intranet Platform 193