Two Learning Impact Awards for Giunti Labs' LCMS and DR technologies
Two of Giunti Labs' applications are among this year's winners of the prestigious IMS Learning Impact Awards.
A leading learning and mobile content management solution provider, Giunti Labs has won a 'Gold' and a 'Best in category' award at the IMS Learning Impact Awards (LIAs), the world's annual competition for the high impact use of technology to support and enhance learning. Organised by the IMS Global Learning Consortium (IMS GLC), the LIAs recognise use of technology to improve learning across all education segments and in all regions of the world.
Giunti Labs won the Gold Award for building a Dynamic Management Skills Catalogue - using its learn eXact learning content management system (LCMS) - for the France-based international leader in learning and development, Cegos.
During 2007 Cegos selected Giunti Labs and its LCMS, learn eXact, to help it port Cegos' product offerings into a new generation blended catalogue, combining classroom training, e-learning and pre- and post-training evaluation in a modular and personalisable way for end user organisations.
Today Cegos' e-learning catalogue comprises 200 highly modular learning experiences. These are available in 10 languages and are dynamically configurable, via Giunti Labs' learn eXact LCMS, to create personalised learning objects playlists which can be linked to any third party learning management system (LMS).
Providing learning materials to 200,000 end-users a year, the Cegos Catalogue represents Europe's largest initiative in soft skills e-learning catalogue development.
Through using the learn eXact LCMS, the Cegos Catalogue is loadable within any pre-existing learning management system (LMS) and related tracking can support planning and management within the competency development cycle.
According to Pascal Debordes, Cegos' e-learning Director, clients of Cegos found those e-Learning Solutions by Cegos modules particularly attractive, well designed and very interactive. International companies also value the fact that those solutions are localised in 10 languages, taking into account cultural gaps.
A France-based project also won the 'Best Rich Media Solution' category LIA for Giunti Labs. This time, it was for the use of Giunti Labs' HarvestRoad Hive digital repository (DR) in developing 'the Vet Tube', a digital marketplace for video lectures for veterinary education.
In spring 2007, the Lyon Vet School selected HarvestRoad Hive DR technology to design a multi-access digital marketplace for educational resources. This applied both to formal educational systems in the Lyon University network and new, 'web 2-like', informal and innovative learning services, such as the 'Vet Tube' - a 'You Tube for Education' service giving access to educational video lectures and resources harvested from within the School's repository and a federation of third party repositories federated via OKI OSIDs interfaces.
The Vet Tube DM is now being accessible not only by Lyon University students but also by students abroad, covering all French speaking countries, including the faculties in Montreal (Canada), Rabat (Morocco) and Dakar (Senegal).
Fabrizio Cardinali, Giunti Labs' CEO, commented: "Naturally, we're delighted that our work is being recognised with international awards in this way.
"In the case of both Cegos and the Lyon Vet School, our products are helping to improve both accessibility to, and the effectiveness of, learning materials. They are also adding innovative and creative content personalisation solutions.
"In turn, this is helping learners to perform their jobs more effectively and efficiently - to benefit both their organisations and their organisations' customers.
"Of course, technology does not stand still and we are now extending our learn eXact LCMS and HarvestRoad Hive DR solutions into higher degrees of personalisation.
"This is true on the media side, adding mobile and virtual worlds' content editors - to create content delivered via BlackBerrys, PDAs and Virtual Worlds. It also applies to the skills side, enhancing the possibility of dynamically linking personalised content playlists from pre-existing third party LMSs and VLEs, such as SumTotal, Saba, Oracle, Blackboard, Sakai and Moodle," he added.
"Once the data is in the digital repository and content management system, the solution can determine who is attempting to download data, along with which background skills and portofolio s/he has, what device s/he is using and where s/he is.
"In other words, Giunti Labs' solutions give each learner the right information to solve her/his skills gaps - and provide this for the right device in the right location - to create a community of those who are following the same studies, regardless of where the learners are and which competency background they have."
The LIAs finalists were evaluated by an expert panel of judges and the attendees at the IMS annual Learning Impact conference and Summit on Global Learning Challenges, held recently in Barcelona, Spain.
The Learning Impact conference brings together leaders from supplier, educational, and government organisations focused on improving access, affordability, and quality of education worldwide. This year's conference featured record attendance of global leaders from 25 countries and six continents.
According to the IMS GLC, the LIA awards are unique in that they recognise the use of technology in context.
Nominations include not only information about the technology but how it is used by an education provider. In addition, the entries are evaluated according to eight criteria of impact, including improving access to learning, improving affordability of learning, and improving the quality of learning.
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