CASE STUDIES \ KNOWLEDGE SHARING PLATFORM

KNOWLEDGE SHARING PLATFORM

Our Client wanted to develop a Web-enabled application for its client, to allow sharing of learning resources between various Educational Authorities. The application was intended to enable teachers and education professionals to add & refer to online learning resources such as Articles, Courses, and References etc. Icreon developed the web enabled solution for our client. The application provides multi-level access to students, teachers, and licensee users. Each licensee manages its own users along with the categories of learning resources to be stored and shared among users. In addition, the application can be deployed within an Intranet setup by individual authorities to manage their internal learning resource network, without connecting to the primary network on the Internet

Business Requirement

Our client wanted to develop a Web-based application using which, Regional Educational Authorities (REAs) and City Learning Points (CLPs) could allow their users including students and teachers, to add, modify and access learning resources, thereby enhancing their own knowledge, awareness and performances.

Technologies used in developing this web application are:

The solution was required to be developed as a Web-enabled application for the cleint. The application would be used by educational authorities such as REAs and CLPs as a ‘Learning Resource Sharing Service’ within the realms of their individual licenses by their users - Teachers and Students. The Users would follow a hierarchy of access levels to utilize the application. The solution was also intended to be deployable at the Intranet level to be accessed within restricted domains.

The solution is a service application that uses the Internet to share and manage learning resources provided by educational authorities. Teachers and Students, the Users who access the application, belong to the educational authorities that subscribe for the service.

Educational authorities need to obtain a license in order to use our client's network services. A user license entitles the licensee (educational authorities), to offer teachers and students, access to the network. The licensee can create a User Account and assign a Username and Password to it. The assigned user can use this information to login to the network and access its services, depending on the Rights assigned. Teachers, students and other users such as the parents of such students, can access the network using the public access area for learners. Users can browse and search for resources based on a specific selection criteria. Teachers can also be Authors and Editors within the specified license area. Authors can create learning resources within the network, while the editors can review and publish the resources. At this level, users have their own password-protected accounts.

Licensees can manage their users and categories of learning resources that are required to be stored and shared amongst users. The solution provides the facility to configure the user interface of a particular licensee with unique color codes and a logo that represents the educational institution. The licensee can ask the Global Administrator of the network to enable this facility. In addition, licensees can create a copy of the complete application and use it over their Intranet setup. This copy has a single authority of operation, supported by the licensee’s technical support staff. Within the Intranet setup, the application is disconnected from the client's service. Our client creates this version of the application by copying the original application and modifying it to operate in a customer specific environment.

The solution is extremely user-friendly and requires minimum technical maintenance. To allow scalable Web-based access, the solution has been developed using ASP 3.0 (front-end) and SQL Server 2000 (back-end). The application is hosted within a Windows based environment on the IIS Web Server.

Summary

The solution provides comprehensive features for easier management of resources over the network. As a service aimed at sharing learning resources among teachers & students, the application offers subject-wise cataloguing and advance search features for easy access. With these features and more, the solution has turned out to be an advanced Knowledge Management solution allowing educational authorities to make their resources available across distances to facilitate collaborative learning processes. At present, the solution is actively used to manage learning resources, enabling a secure access to resources over the Internet.