Giunti Labs involved in Prolix project

Prolix project provides LMS, LCMS and business intelligence tools aimed at aligning learning with business processes

Giunti Labs, Europe's leading e-learning and mobile learning content management solutions (LCMS) vendor, is taking part in Prolix, a four-year research and development project co-funded by the European Commission under the Sixth Framework Programme, Priority 2 'Information Society Technologies'.

The Prolix project, which brings together 19 partners from nine countries, is coordinated by IMC Germany and provides LMS, LCMS and business intelligence tools aimed at aligning learning with business processes, by bridging e-learning and business intelligence tools by means of shared standards and interfaces.

The Prolix architecture is designed through a service-orientated open framework named OBELIX (Open Business intelligence and E-Learning Interoperability and eXchange framework) and implemented by means of blending both vendor (such as Giunti Labs' learn exact LCMS) and open source components.

As a target outcome, the Prolix architecture will enable organisations to improve their employees' competencies more quickly, as business requirements change.

The goal is a minimum 20 per cent reduction in the 'time to competency' to be measured in the workforces of the large organisations and multinationals which are engaged in the project.

"The delay between the identification of learning needs and actual learning affects the competitiveness of any company," explained Giunti Labs CEO, Fabrizio Cardinali.

"The Prolix project aims to make people and organisations more competitive by reducing the time it takes to fill competency gaps and build proficiency, based on business needs and daily work processes".

The key innovation in Prolix consists of a process and competency driven framework which interlinks business process intelligence tools with knowledge management and learning environments.

Angus Turpin, manager for Giunti Labs in the UK and Ireland, commented: "Not only should the delay between identifying a learning need and the actual learning taking place be as short as possible but the learning material must be targeted to the learner's individual learning style and behaviour.

"Personalised learning solutions are needed in order to improve an employee's work performance significantly.

Achieving this involves using technological solutions which will allow the user to access learning content any time it is needed - and to access it via the most convenient device available at that time".

The Prolix project envisages a system that allows for business process driven learning at the workplace, taking into account the single learner and her/his needs as well as the learner's organisation's requirements.

In addition, the learner will be able to initialise a learning task her/himself, thus producing self-guided learning in corporate environments.

Prolix supports a complete learning process life cycle from analysing complex business situations and identifying individual and organisational learning goals, to analysing competencies and matching them with individual skills.

According to Cardinali, this should lead to the definition and execution of appropriate learning interventions and the simulation of competency oriented processes, with a constant monitoring of learners' performance with respect to defined learning and business goals.

"Prolix combines business processes with learning processes in corporate environments, enabling business process driven learning at the workplace, taking into account both the needs of the individual learner and those of the company," Turpin added.

The solutions under development will support and enhance the speed and effectiveness of both formal and informal learning processes, integrating learning management platform technologies - such as Giunti Labs' learn eXact LCMS - with support services.

Fabrizio Giorgini, RandD Manager of Giunti Labs, commented: "Learning models will enable the identification of learning scenarios for process-orientated learning.

The models will be described according to the IMS Learning Design specification.

"The first prototype of learning design editor has been already developed and integrated in the reference LCMS, Giunti Labs' learn eXact.

"A simple and intuitive graphical user interface allows the models to be created or modified and learning resources, roles, activities and services to be defined according to the particular business scenario.

Developed web-services for the access to the learning resources repositories enable the exchange and interoperability of e-learning pedagogy and materials - and encourage greater reuse and efficiency".

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