Case study

Giantommaso D’Astolto

NEST project

Alta Scuola Politecnica VII cycle

Wikicompetenze

What is it?

Italian collaborative wiki for sharing experiences and documentation within a network of schools

The aim is to collect today’s best practices in the Italian scenario in order to create a unique model for schools

Homepage

In the homepage we find:

- a brief description of the service

- the structure of the website

- a list of comments and uploaded material

How does it work?

Users, after registering, can upload and download material concerning the current situation of the Italian market

The material consists on the results of a first research on 40 schools and all the updates given by voluntary participants

Discussed topics include the teaching system and the use of certifications

IT tools

Chat and forumsfor comment sharing

Document sharingfor material transfering

Wikisfor interactive collaboration

Strengths

Very interesting idea of combining schools with differentbackgrounds

Ambitious goal to provide guide lines for a unique model of teaching

Great importance is put on the feedback system

Weaknesses

The tool is not properly used, either because of a confusing website structure or of bad understanding of the tool (in this case there is need for a better explanation)

There are few wikis and numerous documents updated, which slows the interaction among users. Besides sometimes comments and material are uploaded in the wrong page

Business model

The service is open to the schools that want to contribute and it’s sponsored by the Italian Ministry of University and Research (MIUR)

A group of technology experts participated in the implementation of the project

All institutions that want to participate need to sign up in the website before being operative

Conclusions and take-aways

The idea behind the project is worthwhile and involves a hot topic in today’s national debate

The tool however would need a better layout, a more understandable structureand a simple explanation on how to use the provided tools

We can see opportunities to scale it down, especially for sharing experiences among those responsible for small subprojects.