Capítulo 6 - Leveraging web 2.0 for learning and collaboration

Ada Giannatelli
Instituto Politécnico de Milano

1.  PROLOGUE

Established in 1995, the METID Centre of the Politecnico di Milano (Metodi E Tecnologie Innovative per la Didattica-Innovative Methods and Technologies for Learning) is aimed at promoting and supporting innovation of learning services¹. Its core business is designing and developing e-learning and e-collaboration services for public and private organizations at national and international level.

The aim of this contribution is to provide an overview of Web 2.0 technologies and practices that are entering mainstream use at METID Centre, with a special focus on staff learning and collaboration.

The contribution focuses on Web 2.0 technologies and practices that are entering mainstream use among METID Centre staff to foster learning and collaboration.

2.  E-LEARNING VS E-COLLABORATION

Learning is not the end itself, but rather a mean to an end, which can be to improve knowledge and/or productivity performance of individuals and teams, depending on context (curricular education, lifelong learning, workplace). According to research data² and METID experience, to achieve this end it is crucial to integrate formal experiences with informal learning activities:

• In day-today staff workflow.
• In education services developed for internal and external bodies.

Considering informal learning as learning resulting from daily life activities related to work, family or leisure³, e-learning becomes the integration of different aspects, such as education, training, and instruction, but also information, communication, collaboration, and knowledge sharing.

Leveraging informal learning is a strategic objective of METID Centre as both a cost-saving and efficiency-yielding initiative. In order to develop service development and research projects, METID human capital is organized into functional areas (such as project management, administration and IT, customer service, visual design, multimedia publishing, software development, etc.) that need to communicate and collaborate:

• Among them.
• With stakeholders, such as project partners, customers, final users, etc.

The currently available Web 2.0 technology offers a wide set of free tools that allow to perform value-added activities (picture 1), whose the contribution presents some examples.

2.1.  KNOWLEDGE SHARING

METID human capital embedded Web 2.0 tools in its day-today workflow in order to:

• Share competencies, know-how, procedures, operational tools, etc.. inside each functional area, which developed its own, self-managed knowledge base: Wiki and Moodle are the most used tools, but we are currently testing Elgg to foster collaborative aspects.
• Share helpful information for project development among each workgroup: del.icio.us is used both at design stage, to share just-in-time, customized referenceware for benchmarking, and at content production stage, to develop collaboratively online resources for final users (e.g. of workshops and online courses).

The same tools can be used also to set up communities of practice: the Online vocational guidance project [http://www.elearning.careerservice.polimi.it/] integrates Moodle and videoconferencing tools to enable the Career Service of the Politecnico di Milano to deploy communities of practice on job search-related subjects.

METID is also fostering the use of Web 2.0 tools for knowledge production among faculty and university staff with specific consulting services.

2.2.  INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL COMMUNICATION

Organizational and operational needs, such as the increasing number of international projects (e.g. EU-funded projects) and collaborators working from different workplaces drove METID Centre to leverage Web 2.0 technologies for internal and external communication in order to:

• Share operational information and monitor workgroup activities, such as gantt charts with Google Docs&Spreadsheets.
• Trace brainstorming and co-design sessions inside workgroup, but also with partners and stakeholders, with CMap and other mindmapping tools. Mind maps are also used to manage discussion table, e.g. to negotiate activities.
• Enable synchronous collaboration (mainly via audio and textchat) and file exchange among small groups of people (usually up to five people), with Skype and other instant messaging tools.
• Enable synchronous online meetings with external partners, with videoconferencing tools such as DimDim. In order to trace idea exchange, these tools can be combined with e.g. mindmapping tools.
• Arrange face to face and online meetings and share calendars, with Meet-o-Matic and Google Calendar.

2.3.  DOCUMENT PRODUCTION

Document management is an increasingly important process for METID Centre and for many Italian organizations⁴:

• To collaboratively produce, update, store, and deliver documents and procedures. As an ISO-certified organization, METID traces project and process documentation (e.g. design specifications, project planning, management practices, etc.) with KnowledgeTree.
• To set up specifically targeted communities of practice, such as in the eCollaboration project [http://ecollaboration.metid.polimi.it], where ISO-certified organizations of the Politecnico di Milano use Moodle and KnowledgeTree to distribute documents, to share best practices and useful information, and to collaboratively review and update procedures, forms, and instructions.

The added value of KnowledgeTree and of other Document Management Systems (DMS) such as Alfresco is that they allow to trace and manage editing workflow and to index contents, that are ubiquitously accessible. METID Centre uses also Wiki and Google Docs&Spreadsheets, mostly to produce just in time documents with immediate impact at the point of need.

2.4.  DISSEMINATION OF RESEARCH OUTCOMES AND RESULTS

Dissemination is not the end of a research project: the challenge is to establish a follow-up process that carries out an effective collaboration also after project conclusion. To this end, Web 2.0 tools were identified as a useful opportunity in international projects to:

• Build and update efficiently content, also in rich-media format.
• Create a «dissemination with a human touch», made for people by people, where the project is an experience to be shared.
• Adjust communication according to audience feedback, keeping in touch with interested people for long term results.

For example, in the projects of the EU- funded eLene consortium [http://www.elene-centre.net/] such as eLene-EE [http://www.elene-ee.net], Wiki, YouTube, Flickr, Facebook, and del.icio.us were integrated to circulate research outcomes and results and to provide a visual storytelling of project dissemination [http://www.elene-ee.net/4._E-zine_-_1st_issue].

3.  DISCOVERING ADDED VALUE

Adoption of Web 2.0 tools to foster learning and collaboration at METID Centre brought the following outcomes:

• Active commitment of human capital in knowledge sharing and good practice spreading.
• Emergence of new and creative ways of communicating.
• Optimization and rationalization of document management workflows.
• Optimization and rationalization of project management workflows.