Live and learn

Operating across Luxembourg, mySchool! is Europe’s largest educational e-learning portal. Daniel Weiler, project manager at mySchool!, explains the vision behind the project, how mySchool! has evolved to incorporate the latest technologies, and how it has devolved its ownership, with the portal effectively being managed by the users themselves.

In 2001, as part of the eLuxembourg initiative to raise awareness and use of technology in education and business, the Luxembourg Ministry of Education commissioned the creation of a web-based learning place. The project was built to promote e-learning and to ensure that by 2003, all school leavers would be computer literate.

The Luxembourg Ministry of Education’s concept was a simple one: to provide the country’s students with easy access to reliable, validated, educational tools and content to assist them with their studies whether in or outside of school hours. With home PC use topping 90 per cent in Luxembourg, the web was considered the ideal medium to bring together disparate sources of data via a single interface on the desktop. But the vision of ‘mySchool!’, as it came to be known, did not end there.

Ease of use, particularly with respect to navigating and searching for information was critical if mySchool! was to become a hit with students. In addition, we had a definite vision for collaboration between students, teachers, parents, employers and information providers, all facilitated through this unified interface. And not just any interface, but one suitably intuitive for even the youngest of users and, more importantly, absolutely safe.

Choosing a solution

Our selected portal had to incorporate the following four key features:

Open, standards-based development and portal framework – Information existed across a range of formats including databases, image libraries and the web, and was potentially created in any number of development environments such as J2EE/Java, .Net, mainframe and proprietary environments. We needed to harness the disparate sources of information and make it available to users;
Collaboration – mySchool! was intended to be about collaboration, with students and teachers encouraged to create and share content. We wanted to create shared workspaces, where students and teachers could meet, communicate, and create and exchange content. It would also enable qualified users to manage the interface of participants, controlling what they see on their screens. This functionality would prove particularly useful when, for instance, soliciting individual responses from a virtual class of students;
Security – We wanted adequate security measures without inhibiting full and free access to mySchool! resources. While web content would be secured through firewalls in accordance with the international ‘SafeBorders’ content initiative (www.safeborders.lu), user access would be gained through a single sign-on server. Therefore, users would have to log in only once to gain access to a range of resources based on their identity and profile;
Scalability – The solution needed to be completely scalable, not just in terms of number of users, but also the number and types of applications accessed. We could not predict exactly how students would react to this new resource, so we had to be flexible and respond accordingly.

mySchool!: a sure thing?

Three thousand Luxembourg teachers had registered on mySchool! by October 2001. Even during the early stages, several practical benefits had become apparent. The delivery of approved teaching materials to students and pupils via the internet virtually eliminated traditional delivery costs, while the flexibility and ease of use of the portal enabled teachers and pupils to develop new collaborative tools and ways of working online. Moreover, disabled children and those unable to attend school regularly could now access and participate in the conventional curriculum delivered through mySchool!.

By September 2002, 10,000 users were regularly accessing the portal and, six months later, this figure had grown to 46,000, of which 36,000 were students. During this deployment, we incorporated a variety of user features to promote and generate benefits from mySchool! including:

mySchool! SmartContent Gadget Web Service allows mySchool! users to build web-based community content (www.mysite.lu);
To help the Ministry of Luxembourg meet its e-learning targets, computer integrated multimedia was installed. This enables users to adapt to working in an online environment, as well as offering complete Microsoft Office training online;
Technology was incorporated to allow end-users to create and share database-driven applications remotely and therefore to participate actively in the construction of mySchool!’s learning environment;
Different log-in profiles were created for users including teachers, pupils and administration staff. In addition to providing a single, profile-based sign on to mySchool!, this enables relevant information to be pushed to specific groups associated with Luxembourg’s education system.

Behind the scenes

Rollout of the portal was backed by a range of supporting programmes including training, content development and validation, incorporation of new user applications, content indexing, hardware and software upgrading and support.

We also conducted awareness programmes to increase the number of users, content contributors and maintainers. Many of these developments were designed to automate processes, reduce the central management burden, devolve ownership of content, and make end-users as autonomous as possible. This was a trend that would be completed with the latest versions of our portal and collaboration server.

The moment of truth

New Generation mySchool! was officially launched in November 2003. Individual schools can now create their own local intranet on mySchool!, providing a specific view of, and access rights to, the portal. mySchool! includes a security and administrative framework for managing applications in separate domains, each with a separate audience, and a separate set of administrators offering administrative responsibilities where they are most suited. Essentially, this enables local schools to manage their own portal environment.

Additionally, local communities can now be established within individual schools. Each community can function as a separate site, with its own branding and layout, a community knowledge base, community-level search and a secure sub-community hierarchy, allowing pupils and teachers to create communities within communities. This means focused working environments fulfilling the specific needs of community members, for example, a class or interest group. Up to 80 individual communities are expected to be established within each school, representing classes, subject areas, and interest groups, and producing 2,800 individual communities across mySchool!.

mySchool! helps teachers manage the content and applications pupils access during class. In effect, users receive a personalised view of mySchool!, based on their profile, which can now be managed locally. An enhanced personalisation engine determines the applications each user views, the scheme that controls his or her navigation between applications, the branding of the start page, and even highlights the most relevant topics to be consulted. As a result, different type of users, or those from different communities, receive distinct and personalised experiences of the education web, based on the applications and content relevant to them.

New responsibilities

The new features have dramatically reduced the burden on the mySchool! central planning and management team, which now consists of just five people managing the entire portal. In reality, this team is supported by 36 content maintainers within local schools charged with keeping the content up to date.

Using our technology provider’s content server, content maintainers without web-programming skills can create, validate and publish content across their local mySchool! communities in a controlled, consistent manner. A ‘light’ version of the content server has also been developed by the ministry of education to enable pupils to create and publish content locally. From an administrative perspective, this localisation represents a major breakthrough, as previously, all content was created, managed and updated centrally for the entire portal.

And if that wasn’t enough

The following options have been incorporated into New Generation mySchool! since September 2002:

Enhanced collaboration enables classes to work together much more effectively;
Intuitive Wizard-driven portlet creation allows users to create and share database-driven applications;
Community and individual content creation through mySchool! SmartContent Gadget Web Service, enables non-technical mySchool! users to build web-based community content;
The mySchool! Webf@ctory features (www.mysite.lu) allows pupils to design and publish their own website.

Winning hearts and minds

The overall objective of New Generation mySchool! was to build on the functionality offered by our enterprise web suite and provide users with as much autonomy as possible. We strongly believe that by devolving ownership and responsibility to local schools and, in some cases, individual pupils, mySchool! will rapidly establish itself as a principal education resource across Luxembourg. This objective is further supported by an unprecedented education and awareness campaign to promote the benefits of the mySchool! portal nationwide.

Without the support and participation of end users, a portal will never become living and truly collaborative, regardless of the technology. Today, students have unprecedented access to indexed and validated reference materials, text books, images, online tests and exercises, in addition to the option of contacting education providers, teachers or other students to collaborate further. The scalability of our enterprise web suite means local communities can be established and managed without placing any additional burden on the central administrative function.

With potentially 2,800 e-learning communities spread across the country, managed locally, but based on a single, open framework, mySchool! is as rigorous and demanding as any traditional corporate application and represents a tremendous example of a portal that is truly living.

Daniel Weiler is project manager of mySchool! He can be contacted at weiler@myschool.lu.