EVALUATION OF A COMPLEX SYSTEM: IMPACT MEASUREMENT AND THE ARISTOTELE PERSONALIZED LEARNING & COLLABORATIVE WORKING ENVIRONMENT

The ARISTOTELE project had the general aim to foster workplace learning of employees through the use of innovative information technology tools and environments. For that purpose, it developed an integrated personalized learning and collaborative working environment, which supports learning and training of workers within their organisations, as well as organisations in managing the “knowledge stock” available.

Five strategic areas for the ARISTOTELE impact will be addressed:
• Learning and Training (improvement of learning and training processes tailored to knowledge workers' needs and expectations);
• Human Resource Management (supporting Human Resource development, team formation, allocation, recruitment);
• Collaboration (improvement of collaboration among workers using social approaches and sharing knowledge);
• Improvement of knowledge management practices;
• Innovation (fostering of innovation processes).

The ARISTOTELE Evaluation Framework distinguishes four evaluation categories, which are:
1) Concept validation of the ARISTOTELE models;
2) Usability study of the ARISTOTELE tools;
3) User validation of the tools and capabilities for end users; and
4) Software validation and impact measurement.

The ARISTOTELE impact measurement concentrates on five main issues: costs, time, quality, outputs and fit with the organisation. It looks for changes induced by using the ARISTOTELE platform and tools in comparison to the technical solutions used before in similar circumstances. The aim was to identify objectively measurable performance indicators and to measure them applying business scenarios – business processes taken from the industrial application partners and which also formed part of the data basis in the elicitation process of the work-practices and requirements used for defining the tools and the platform. These processes are relevant both for the two application partners and potential users.

The presentation will focus on the concrete evaluation actions and will present baseline data collected within the industrial partners as benchmark for the pilot testing.