Case study

Giantommaso D’Astolto

NEST project

Alta Scuola Politecnica VII cycle

Oilproject

What is it?

Italian on-line virtual school with free lectures open to all users.

The service is build up on the concepts of

community and voluntary participation

Homepage

In the homepage we have the

possibility to sign up (registration is free) ,

select one of the lectures from the

database or connect to an on-going

online talkshow

Profiles

There are basically 3 profiles among which the user can choose, with different functionalities available:

- Professor: can record and upload video/audio lectures and answer to question asked by students

- Student : can rate topics, participate to talkshows, watch uploaded lectures and ask questions

- Member of a community: upload group pages and promote their initiatives

IT tools

Google maps

for locating events

Video player

for uploading lectures

Videoconferences

for on-going talkshows

Strengths/1

The service is completely free

The registration is free, but you don’t even need to register to access to most of the content!

Strengths/2

The content is well organised, therefore the research is fast and simple

Moreover there are several topics regarding today’s life

Strengths/3

Possibility of interaction through forums and chats

Besides there is some sort of feedback in order to evaluate the quality of the material

Weaknesses/1

The voluntary nature of the service may slow down its growth

Some “classical” subjects, such as maths are still missing

There is need for a management of the feedback system

Business model

The service is completely free and the participation is voluntary, as we said

All the costs are covered through sponsorships

There are also collaborations for promoting the service

Conclusions and take-aways

The idea is very catchy, especially the focus on everyday life’s topics, such as Economics

The role of feedback and the importance of the community should be considered as drivers for the development of this kind of projects

It is important to manage the rating system and evaluate whether a source of information is trustworthy or not