EduM (Mandate)
Project owner: Benedetto Lepori
Project staff: Sibilla Rezzonico, Chiara Succi, Edo Poglia, Lorenzo Cantoni, Jean-François Perret, Peter Schulz
Period: January 2002 to December 2003
Partner: Swiss Virtual Campus
The mandate will explore the conditions for the successful realisation of e-learning activities, focusing in particular on the test and use phase of the courses produced in the framework of the Swiss Virtual Campus programme.
Our main hypothesis is thus that, alongside the development of good quality contents, of a suitable didactical strategy and of high-quality technological support, the quality of an e-learning activity (e.g. of an on-line course) will strongly depend on the successful solution of a series of issues concerning the organisation of the resources needed for the course.
Until now, we have identified two major areas of concern:
That of the preparation and coordination of all the needed production factors, like contents, technological support, infrastructure and human resources for teaching and tutoring.
Our first results show that the type of resources needed so as their arrangement may be clearly different from traditional courses and that then suitable strategies are to be designed to organise and manage these resources.
That of the integration of the e-learning activities into an existing curriculum and institution (e.g., an university degree), the major issues in this area being the recognition of the e-learning activity (e.g., by attributing credit points) and the coordination of time scheduling (of professors and students) and of the use of common facilities (e.g. computer rooms).
