The JITOL project concerns "Just in Time Open Learning". Jitol is based on the essential assumption that collaborative learning is the best way to access professionnals know-how and that it provides an infrastructure for communities of professionnals to discuss, document and enhance their working practices and the knowledge bound up in them. Through the creation of a transient virtual community bound by a strong motivation to analyse focused themes, it bonds and mixes both experts and learners around an electronic conferencing device.
It is Collaborative in the sense that a telematic network
(X.25-Transpac) is implemented as a tool for professionnals to have a
discussion focused on precise topics which relate closely to their
every day activities. JITOL uses a 4 windows interface multimedia
environment. The North-West window is the Evolving Knowledge Base (a
public resource). The North-East window is the electronic debates
(public conferences) window. The South-West window is providing a
private note-book resource with cut and paste capability. The
multimedia Evolving Knowledge Base is currently distributed as a
program.