The poster introduces EXPLAIN, a project funded by the German Federal Ministry of Economy and Technology. The vision of EXPLAIN is to reduce efforts for content projects by means of integrated, IT-supported and independent content development. Current insights in the industry show that enterprises avoid the efforts to produce their own learning content by themselves because the process appears too complex to them. Furthermore, most existing tools support only singular aspects of the content development but do not provide comprehensive process integration of conception, production and management of learning content. To meet these requirements, a web-based Authoring Management Platform to support the production process of learning content and the management of in-house content projects, has been developed within the scope of EXPLAIN.
In times of ubiquitous ICT and an increasing virtualization of everyday life, the use of
technology-enhanced learning (TEL) in German enterprises is yet lagging behind the
international trend – despite significant progress in technology and usability [
These challenges are elaborated and tackled by the research project EXPLAIN
(http://www.explain-project.de). The project is funded by the German Federal
Ministry of Economy and Technology and brings together experts from research and
practice as well as enterprises from producing and pharmaceutical industries.
EXPLAIN aims at the vision of significantly reducing efforts for projects of training
media production (content projects) by means of integrated, holistic, IT-supported and
independent content development. According to fundamental principles of Business
Process Reengineering [
EXPLAIN has been developed in three phases approaching the IT-supported platform solution of the business problem step-by-step (see Fig. 1):
1.) At first, there is the vision of a platform for integrated content development in enterprises. EXPLAIN aims at enabling SMEs to produce their own learning content autonomously through integrated content development, thus being able to react on learning needs efficiently and in time.
2.) Within the first phase, a requirements specification is postulated independently from technological decisions concerning implementation issues which results in a process and service concept of the platform (see Fig. 2).
3.) In the following step, based on the process and service concept, a technical design specification is developed representing the system architecture.
4.) The final step encompasses the implementation of the EXPLAIN Authoring
Management Platform based on the system architecture.
3.1 EXPLAIN Process and Service Concept
The requirements specification of all processes and value added services, which are
implemented into the EXPLAIN platform, are included in the EXPLAIN process and
service concept (see Fig. 2). Prior to the design of the target process and service
concept, an inquiry, modeling and analysis of currently existing editorial processes
and organizational scenarios within the scope of the process of content development
in SMEs is carried out. The synthesis of an optimized TO-BE process model, which
has been revised considering the identified weak spots of the AS-IS process model,
provides the basis for the EXPLAIN process and service landscape, which describes
the implementation of the EXPLAIN platform on the requirements specification level.
This TO-BE process interlinks the sub-processes of project management, authoring
and content management with each other in an integrative way by using
organizational and technological interfaces. Together with easy-to-use and low-cost
implementation tools, this process is supposed to foster the acceptance and
application of content development or TEL in general within enterprises [
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Modell / BilSlOtüfcMkliasterial The next step is to transfer the process and service requirements to the development of the EXPLAIN system architecture (see Fig. 3), which is a technical-oriented design specification for implementing the before outlined process structures and services. The EXPLAIN architecture consists of the central applications of Content Process Management, Content Authoring and Content Model as well as four service modules. Furthermore, interfaces for integrating EXPLAIN into existing enterprise infrastructures are identified and specified. Of great importance concerning the interfaces is the potential integration of authoring systems. To ensure interoperability, a synchronization of media and metadata between the EXPLAIN platform and the authoring systems is to occur. The main challenge here is the implementation of a consistent, lossless synchronization between the systems. From a technological perspective, this is the essential precondition to avoid media disruptions and thus, data or information redundancies or discrepancies between the applied tools.
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During the last phase, the EXPLAIN platform is being prototypically implemented on
the basis of the system architecture. The EXPLAIN Authoring Management Platform
follows the thesis that it does not make sense for corporate training managers to run
and maintain an own authoring infrastructure within the enterprise and have all the
skills in an internal team – unless the volume of media production is on a very high
level. Therefore, the approach of EXPLAIN is to enable enterprises to produce their
own learning material independently as well as to respond to ad-hoc learning needs in
a cost-effective and time-saving manner. In doing so, a closed self-supply of TEL
actions would be unrealistic and economically not reasonable. The intelligent
integrated solution will instead provide a multitude of authoring tools, assistants and
services on-demand over a web-based platform accessible through the browser. The
idea is that enterprises can use these services whenever they need it. So, services and
tools can also be provided at the newest level of technology [
This demand-oriented approach provides a number of advantages for the user: First, corporate training departments avoid pre-investments into own infrastructures. Instead, appropriate tools can be utilized on-demand over the web-based platform and can be integrated into the overall project. In a similar way, this applies also for media production, which can be outsourced to external service providers or carried out inhouse over the platform. Thus, even small education departments will be released from the necessity to provide all expertise, technology and resources by themselves, but nevertheless, they will still keep their leading position within the content projects. Furthermore, by deploying the platform the professional efforts of internal experts on content development decrease and the amount of time needed for implementation can be shortened enormously, so that profitability for the creation of a learning module or WBT for products with very short lifecycles is assured. 4
The EXPLAIN platform follows the momentum generated by the Web2.0-movement not just by applying message boards, blogs, wikis and communication services, but particularly by incorporating the aspects of individual adaptivity and enterprisespanning collaboration, participation and collective intelligence, which contribute to the character of the platform as an intra-organizational community for content development. The innovative idea of a web-based platform additionally enables regardless of time and place use without the necessity of applying proprietary client software. Through the distributed provision of content, tools and technical services, new kinds of business models arise for the host of the platform, which ensure the sustainability of the EXPLAIN concept.