A Pattern-Based System to Support Collaborative Production of Learning Objects

The use of Web 2.0 technologies has established itself even in corporate environments, profoundly changing both the organizational both operational practices. The so-called " knowledge workers", that are workers whose main object of their business is information, were the main protagonists of this change, adopting very frequently Web 2.0 communication tools for their activities. In previous works, we have identified a methodology that aims to identify and model the collaborative business activities by extracting the latter from a catalogue of models of collaborative activities. The application of the methodology and of the models catalogue to the re-engineering process has been successful in various contexts such as public administration, the ICT Company and Banking Company. In this work, we introduce the experience of using methodology and some collaborative pattern to model the Learning Objects production activities. It has the goal of designing an information system that gives support to collaborative activities related to these processes. The following work is developed as part of a collaborative project between the University of Salento and the CLIO SpA Lecce Company, which has developed a multichannel and interactive system of knowledge transmission called MediaBook. The goal of this work is the review of business processes related to the creation of a MediaBook, in order to improve the support and collaboration between the actors involved making the production phase more efficient. This activity presents different interaction moments between two main actors in the process, which are Author and Publisher. These interactions take place mainly through collaborative tools (chat, mail, etc.) and are not tracked and supported by the production system. Once having modelled the existing process of MediaBook production, we started a phase of review and optimization of the process, paying particular attention to stress collaborative activities carried out by the actors of the process. Re-engineering process was carried out by following a well-defined and methodological approach. In detail, after modelling the processes in an AS-IS version, we identified the major areas of interest and we applied to the latter some collaborative pattern. Subsequently we redesigned in the TO-BE version the MediaBook production process using the patterns. The new process highlights several collaborative aspects that were not raised in the AS-IS version of the process. It allows, in this way, to develop a truly collaborative model of activities to support the production of Learning Object. The used patterns allow to manage and coordinate the collaborative activities (eg: Deadline Agreement, Retrieve Contribution and Flexible Providers, Coordinates Contributions and Flexible providers), but also to "catch" the knowledge produced using the means of communication freely chosen by the actors (Aggregate Activity Loop). This result shows once again the efficiency and effectiveness that we can obtain modelling a process using the methodology and collaborative pattern.