The e-learning project for institutional learning

Every large organisation has to deal with institutional and professional learning, especially if it is responsible for the education and training of its own personnel. This paper presents the e-learning model, designed and developed in order to satisfy all potential educational needs in a lifelong learning perspective and to innovate the institutional learning in a modern work and operational environment within the Italian Army. This model is based on a long experience in the e-learning field gained through the years by the IT-Army Education and Training Command and School of Applied Military Studies – Turin with its Virtual Learning Centre and the University of Turin, which work together for the education of the officers. The e-learning model for the Army was developed in a multifunctional way, and it is human centered, because the idea is to consider the personnel under both aspects: as a provider and as a consumer of educational services. For these reasons a net of several interconnected portals was built each of them with a specific goal mainly based on MOODLE, the Learning Management System largely used by several universities, integrated with several tools. Special attention was given to defining user friendly solutions in order to ease surfing the net and to be used by a wide range of potential users, where all categories of personnel are involved, like Officers, NCOs, Volunteers and civilian staff. In the paper, a multidimensional analysis of the model is discussed with attention to three main dimensions: pedagogical, users’ perspective and technical.