Lifelong learning implementations in virtual communities: formal and informal approaches and their impact on learners

Abstract

The work presents our experience as designers, developers and administrators of an e-Learning system (LMS) used by the Faculty of Economics of the University of Trento. The system started its work in the late 90s and was then rewritten under the increasing need of the users to promote new more collaboration-oriented forms of teaching / learning, compared to traditional ones. Currently we are managing the evolution of the system in the direction to provide a better support for cooperative activities among users. In the work we will describe the evolution of this system, showing why the cooperation in an educational environment requires coherent architectural choices.

Current trends on ICT technologies for enterprise information systems

“…Training can become ubiquitous through mobile learning (Hung and Zhang 2011;Mierlus-Mazilu 2010;Papathanasiou et al 2014). The spread of use of social networking tools has also brought attention to the contribution of social and groupware learning (Casagranda et al 2011;Westerhout et al 2011). …”

Supporting, evaluating and validating informal learning. A social approach

“…The authors mention blogs, wikis, messenger software, YouTube and Facebook as examples of Web 2.0 tools with great IL potential that are very popular especially among younger users. Similarly in [38], the authors discuss the role of social networks in education, a study they conducted while adapting their LMS at the University of Trento to Web 2.0 services. They stress the importance of providing tools for collaborative learning spaces that foster communication and active participation.…”

“…Casagranda et al in [50] explain the social learning platform Online Communities developed in the University of Trento. The platform provides a personal learning environment (PLE) for each learner who in turn can choose what parts of this PLE to import into Online Communities.…”

M-learning: Connecting Teaching and Learning Inside and Outside of School

“…Authors such as Rienzo (2014), Casagranda et al (2011), Vanbaelen et al (2014 mention that learning is not only generated in the moments in which one is in a classroom and with the mediation of a teacher. In fact, human beings cannot give up on learning, since this is human's most intimate nature and is done all the time, from birth to death (Vidmar, 2014 Based on the above, it is possible to recognize the potential of m-learning to articulate learning spaces, inside and outside of school and on an ongoing basis, which also suggests its relevance as a factor for strengthening lifelong learning.…”