Abstract:

The ARISTOTELE project has the general aim to foster workplace learning of employees through the use of innovative information technology tools and environments. It starts from the fact that the wealth of European companies has progressively shifted from tangible assets (e.g. capital, resources) into intangible ones (e.g., knowledge, reputation, management skills, innovation processes, motivation, and attitude). In order to raise the competitiveness of European enterprises, it is extremely important to use information technology to support the provision of advanced solutions, finely tuned to the continuous change in competitive conditions in which organisations operate, capture and support intangible assets. Creativity and innovation inside organisations are directly related to the way people learn (informally and/or formally), collaborate, share ideas, knowledge, and organisational goals.

Enhancing the learning capability of an organisation is a key element to achieve integration and merging of intangibles. But still today learning capabilities of an organisation are mainly devoted to allow acquisition of personal knowledge, skills and competencies that are very difficult to share with peers.

Current Technology-Enhanced Learning (TEL) solutions are centred on contents with very limited personalisation capabilities and then embed learning activities in the content itself. In working environments, this type of rigid TEL solutions are integrated with the general enterprise learning objectives in a very simple (and often simplistic) way, e.g., through definition of pre-determined learning paths (courses) for classes of employees.

ARISTOTELE enhances learning and training of workers within their organisations by defining and developing models, methodologies, technologies and tools to support the emergence of competences and creativity by self-organised acquisition, processing and sharing of new information and knowledge with peers. The five strategic objectives for the ARISTOTELE impact are:

• 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.

In level 4, the ARISTOTELE platform and tools are tested within two industrial partners from the health and telecommunications sector. The presentation will focus on first results from these pilots.

Keywords:

Innovation, human resources, learning, training, web 2.0, platform, impact measurement.