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