Distributed Multimedia Training (DMT)

(Pilot Project of the State of Geneva)

• The project committee (cf. Les instances du projet)
• The project group
  Laurent Quennoz (leader of the project)

  Four trainers:
  Sylvie Freitag, Romain Tschalèr, Patrick Benoit, Christiane Cambi

    13 Super-Users and 22 normal users

The Program

• The pilot project, which is part of the MSOffice Tools Training Project of the Training Center of the Geneva State
• Memorandum
• Plan of the progression of the training cycle
• Platform used: LearningSpace Version 2.5 (the intranet solution ideal for mastering Microsoft Office 97) created by Lotus
• Content of the course: Word 97 created by ENI
• Integrated by AFOGEC
• Consulted by Innovatica
• Specifications of tasks/Cachier des charges

Getting acquainted with the different aspects of the project (Tasks 1-4 of the Specifications of tasks)
• Meeting the colleagues
  

• Learning the state of the project
  The project basically consists of 5 phases:
  1. Preparation phase (June, July and August 2000): constituting the project committee and the working group, and formulating the related documents (e.g. expectations of the Palais de Justice, of the Geneva Training Center and of the DMT solution; the needs; the modes of distribution; and the methods of evaluation, etc.). For detailed information, please consult the pilot training document.
  2. Preparation and installation of the content of the program (September 2000): including training the trainers (3 days); personalizing the training solution and creating the content (for PC), etc.
  3. Distribution of the training (October - December 2000): including modifying some parts of the content of the program, preparing related documents and tutorials, and delivering courses.
  4. Evaluation (December 2000 - January 2001): compiling questionnaires, collecting and analyzing data, and summarizing.
  5. Summary (February - March 2001): compiling the final report of the project and planning for the following training.

  I took part in the project at the third phase, i.e. just before the first training class which was held on October 12, 2000.

• Studying the program: LearningSpace and the course of Word 97
  The platform LearningSpace consists of the following four main bases / rooms:
  
  1. Programme / ScheduleRoom: The ScheduleRoom is the room where learners go to find out about the class: what topics are taught, when tests are administered, what readings are required, when assignments are due and the timeline for completion of the course. In addition, this is where the instructor posts course updates, special announcements, or changes to the course. The ScheduleRoom is often referred to as "home base" as it is where the student always begins when entering their on-line course.
  2. Mediatheque / MediaCenter: The MediaCenter is where the trainer puts all the materials that support the course. It would be like the Instructional Media Center in a school or a library on campus. Materials that might appear in the MediaCenter include: lecture notes, PowerPoint presentations, video clips, audio clips, photo collections, or web sites, to name a few. The trainer directs the student (from the ScheduleRoom) to "go to the MediaCenter" to view or listen to specific materials related to the unit or module being studied.
  3. Salle de cours / CourseRoom: The CourseRoom is similar to a traditional classroom in session. It is dynamic and interactive. it is where learners and teachers are discussing a topic, reflecting on a reading, clarifying understandings, or raising questions. These discussions can occur in small groups, one-to-one or as a whole group. This is also the room where assignments are submitted for grading.
  4. Profil / ProfileRoom: The ProfileRoom is where both the learners and the instructor go to "meet" other learners enrolled in the course. This room lists all the names and e-mail addresses of fellow classmates and the instructors. In addition, each member of the class has their own "profile page" that could include a personal photograph as well as information about special interests, hobbies, and educational background. Much of this information asked for in this room is optional and up to each individual to decide how much they are comfortable with disclosing on-line. However, the ProfileRoom is a handy and friendly place to go to put a face with a name in an otherwise anonymous environment.

     Another aspect of LearningSpace which is important, but does not have a specific room assigned to it, is that of assessment. LearningSpace provides the instructor with the tools to design and administer assessments on line (true/false, short answer, or multiple choice). LearningSpace also provides a student portfolio option where individual grades are recorded and instructor comments as to progress of an individual student are noted.

  The course of Word 97 consists of 1 presentation and 6 modules (for the project we concentrated on the first two modules):

  Word 97	Presentation
  	6 Modules	Objectives (Objectifs)
  		Pre-tests (Pré-requis)
  		Lessons	Texts	Interest (Intérêt)?
  				How to do (Comment Faire)?
  				Little pluses (Les petits plus)!
  			Videos
  			Exercises for practice
  		Final exercises (Exercices récapitulatifs)

  At the very beginning, there were much more problems in the program:

  1. At the technical level: There was no way to go directly inside the program. There appeared quite often unknown errors. Obviously the system was not ready to be used.
  2. At the level of content (Word 97):
     Navigation: Some of the navigating buttons didn't work as they should do. For example, the "Fermer" button in the welcome page is supposed to go back to the page where we can change from course to course but it never works. There is no direct way to go back to the corresponding text after listening to the video.
     On-line help (the button "Aide"): It always leads to the same window of explanation of LearningSpace. For the very beginners, this is completely useless.
     Pre-tests: This part normally tests the learners' knowledge of the field, and then, accordingly, offers suggestions to the learners on the modules/lessons to follow. But this part of the program, for us, is only a decoration. It always depends on the learners themselves to choose what they like to do.
     The texts: There were mainly two kinds of problems here. On the one hand, there were many terms which were difficult for the beginners to understand. On the other hand, the keys of the keyboard are explained in French which don't correspond to those used in the Palais which are in English.
     The videos: The size and content of certain videos are not coherent to the texts. But we can do nothing on it.
     The Exercises: They are done in real Word environment. There are feedbacks, but no correct answers/solutions are offered. It was supposed to have a video showing the correct answer, but it never works. Besides, once the exercise is submitted and if it is not correctly done, there is no way to go back to correct it even if you know how to do it. You can either do it again from the very beginning or give it up. The program forgives no one.
     The final exercises: After following the lessons of each module, a summarizing exercise is required to be done and sent to the trainers to correct. In the exercise of Module 2, several requirements were confusing.

Helping modify the content of the program

• The content of the course mainly consists of 3 parts: texts, videos and exercises (exercises for each lesson and a final exercise for each module). We can modify the texts while nothing can be done in the videos. We tried our best to modify those parts that we thought were not suitable for the very beginners. For example, there are many future users in the Palais who know nothing about the environment of a PC, not to speak Word or Explorer. Thus we replaced with images those terms which we thought might confuse the beginners, or added further explanations.

Helping modifying some documents

1. Not being able to rely on the on-line help and bearing always in mind those very beginners, we created a guide for the learners to follow step by step.
2. Since the expressions of the keys in the program are all in French which don't conform with the keyboard used in Palais de Justice, we created a document to show the correspondence between the two kinds of keys.
3. Before I joined the project, a questionnaire concerning the degree of importance and level of requirements of Word 97 had been done by the justice authorities. In fact, there are two different kinds of requirements: one for the Super-Users, and another for the collaborators (the real users). Based on these questionnaires, two other questionnaires of auto-evaluation are created to get a knowledge of their competence of Word 97 respectively: one for the Super-Users and the other for the collaborators/the real users. These questionnaires are distributed at the beginning of each session of course. In the questionnaires, four levels of competence concerning Word 97 are demanded to specify. In order to put clearer the different levels of competence, we attached to the questionnaires the definition of the levels of competence.

Observing and assisting classes

For the project, there were 5 sessions of courses which were taken place respectively on October 12, 2000, November 2, 2000, November 12, 2000, November 21, 2000 and December 7, 2000. There are a total number of 35 learners among whom 13 are Super-Users (Super-Us) and 22 normal users (Collaborators).

Creating Final Questionnaires

1. Evaluation Questionnaire of the Pilot Project/Questionnaire d'Evaluation du Projet Pilote
2. Final Questionnaire for the Trainers/Questionnaire Finale du Projet Pilote pour les Formateurs
3. Final Auto-Evaluation for Super-Users
4. Final Auto-Evaluation for Collaborators/Normal Users
Back to the Top
Collecting and Analyzing Data
1. Auto-Evaluation Before the Training
   • Super-Us
   • Collaborators/Normal Users
2. Auto-Evaluation After the Training
   In order to learn the progress that the learners think they have made in their knowledge of the notions required, we chose those parts in the above auto-evaluation questionnaire that correspond with those learned in the program (the first two modules of the course), and created another two questionnaires of auto-evaluation (see above). The results are as following:
   • Super-Us
   • Collaborators
3. Comparison of the Auto-Evaluation Before and After the Training
   • Super-Us
   • Collaborators
   From the comparisons we can see that more than 90% of the Super-Us and more than 60% of the users/collaborators are confident that they have mastered the required basic notions of Word 97. The less mastered are those more complex, and what's more 33% of the examined population finished only half of the required content, i.e. only the first module. Thus we may conclude that the progress is remarkable.
4. Final Evaluation of the Project
   1. Explanation
      • The population who answered the questionnaire
        Super-Us: 11 persons (52%)
        Collaborators: 10 persons (48%)
        Total: 21 persons
      • Module(s) finished
        2 modules: 14 persons (67%)
        1 module: 7 persons (33%)
      • Population before the training: 35 persons

   2. Identification
      This part of the questionnaire aims to know the subjects' knowledge of Windows, Internet and Word 97. The result is as following:

      Environments	Good	Average	Little	None
      Windows	33%	29%	38%	0%
      Internet	19%	33%	24%	24%
      Word 97	32%	29%	29%	10%

      From the above table we can see that nearly 1/3 of the subjects know little of Windows, almost half of them don't know how to go around in Internet and more than 1/3 of them don't know how to use Word 97. Therefore, my colleagues are creating an additional course on Windows and Internet in order to help those who don't know very well these environments. This is one of the advantages of LearningSpace: we can add into it whatever courses we like .

   3. Self-training / Autoformation
      This part is to know what they have done during their self-training, concerning pre-test/pré-requis, texts/textes, videos/vidéos exercises/exercices and the final exercises/exercices récapitulatifs:

      Content	All	Interesting Ones	Some Randomly Chosen	None
      Pre-tests	43%	14%	29%	14%
      Texts	48%	33%	19%	0%
      Videos	33%	24%	19%	24%
      Exercises	56%	29%	10%	5%
      Final Exercises	67% (2 modules)		33% (1 module)

   4. Efficiency / Efficacité
      Four questions (Questions 9-13) in this part are put forward to know whether the learners think the environment is efficient or not. One of the questions is on whether they think they have attained the objective of learning in this environment. 38% of them totally agree that they have attained it, 48% partially agree and 14% of them don't know. The other 3 questions are all on the efficiency of the environment. 41% of them totally agree that the environment is efficient, 46% partially agree and 10% little. To conclude, we may say that the environment is efficient (since conservatively speaking 41% + 46%/2 =64% of the learners think so) but not as much. There are still something to be done in the program (see the following).

   5. Navigation
      This part consists of 6 questions (Questions 14-19). They are all related to the easiness and rapidity of navigating in the program. The result is: 46% of them totally agree that it is easy and rapid to navigate, 43% partially agree, 9% little and 2% not at all. We may say that most of the learners were able to navigate easily and rapidly in the program.

   6. Helping Tools / L'outil d'aide
      This part is composed of 4 questions (Questions 20-23). Two of them are on the error messages (whether they indicate clearly the errors and whether it is easy and rapid to correct them), and the other two are on the on-line help (whether it is useful and easy to find the information one searches). The following are the results: 25% totally agree that the helping tools are useful and efficient, 40% partially agree, 13% little, 4% not at all and 18% have no idea.

   7. Course Materials / Matériel du cours (textes, vidéos, exercices, consignes, etc.)
      There are 3 sub-parts in this part: one of the texts (Questions 26-29, 39), one of the videos (Questions 30-33, 40) and still another one of the exercises (Questions 34-36, 41). The questions on the texts concern the attractiveness of the materials, the variety of choices, the size of the text the explication of the notions and the usefulness of the texts. The questions on the videos concern the duration of the videos, the videos being interesting or not, the usefulness of the videos, the correspondence of the videos with the texts. As for the questions on the exercises, they concern the explications, the solutions, the usefulness and the facility of doing them. The following table shows the degree of the agreement of the learners on the questions:

      Materials	Totally	Partially	Little	Not at all	No idea
      Texts	58%	32%	6%	2%	2%
      Videos	54%	24%	1%	4%	17%
      Exercises	40%	38%	6%	5%	11%
      Coherence between them	56%	29%	5%	0%	10%
      Objective of every lesson	57%	38%	5%	0%	0%
      Pre-tests	43%	33%	5%	0%	19%

      Thus generally speaking, more than half of the learners are satisfied with the content of the program, except the pretests and the exercises.

   8. Interface (interaction entre utilisateur et machine)
      3 questions are put forward to know whether they think the interface is attracting, easy to use and has all the necessary functions: 44% totally agree, 32% partially, 8% little and 16% have no idea. We may say that the learners think positively of the interface, although some of them have no idea of what it is.

   9. Integration of the training with the working environment / Intégration de la formation à l'environnement de travail
      This part (Questions 45-49) is aimed to know whether it is easy for them to find time and computer to follow the training. There are 5% of them totally agree that it is easy to find time, while 90% totally agree that there is no problem to find a PC. Therefore we can see the main problem for them is to find time to follow the training which conforms with the trainers' answers in a later part.

   10. Method of training / Méthode de formation/
       There are 10 questions (Questions 50-59) on this new method of training: 57% totally appreciate this method of training , 25% partially, 6% little, 8% not at all and 4% have no idea. 42% of them think that compared with the traditional method, this method of training is efficient, while 33% of them partially agree. We may conclude that most of the learners appreciate this method of training.

   11. Trainers / Formateur/Encadrement
       Support of the trainers (Questions 60-62): 56% totally agree that the support of the trainers is indispensable during the training, 27% partially agree, 5% little, 6% not at all and 6% have no idea. 66% totally agree that the training should take place at both the working place and in the classroom; 70% totally agree that the training should be ensured by the presence of the trainers whenever needed and also by telephone; and the persons in charge of the training should play a technique role (solve the technical problems) (43% totally agree), or a pedagogic role (transfer knowledge) (38% totally agree). The order of the roles is: 1. technique, 2. Pedagogic, 3. Psychological, 4. Others.

       Reaction of the trainers during the training (Questions 63-65): 56% totally agree that the trainers were available and responded rapidly to the questions and given quickly feedbacks to the exercises, 17% partially agree, 2% not at all and 25% have no idea.

       We may say that in their opinion, the support of the trainers is indispensable and they expect a trainer who plays a technical as well as pedagogic role. The present trainers are very active during the training.

   12. Conclusion
       There is only one question (Question 66) in this part: 52% of them are totally satisfied with this new system of training, 38% partially, 5% little and 5% not at all.

5. Final Questionnaire for the Trainers / Questionnaire Finale du Projet Pilote pour les Formateurs

   All the four trainers have answered the questionnaire and a summary was made according to their answers:

   1. Do think it is easy for the learners to finish the two modules within the defined delay (2 or 3 weeks)? Why?

      In general, they think that 2 weeks are too short for the very beginners. It is more reasonable to give a 3-week delay. The reasons are as following: The learners following their training during their working hours. Most of them are very busy. To follow the course means more working hours on their daily work. We can also see this from the learners response: only 5% of them totally agree that they can easily find time to follow the training. 52% of them think little or not at all of so. Thus it depends on the charges and availability of each person.

   2. Among the 35 learners of the pilot project, 14 have finished the first 2 modules and 7 have finished the first one and 14 have done nothing, do you know the reasons and what happened? Explain in details.

      As a whole, they think that lack of time is the main reason. Besides the last group of learners had their presentation course near the end of the year, a period of holidays. For the Super-Users (11/13 finished the first two modules as required), it is much easier for them to fulfill the requirement since most of them had already had the basic knowledge of Word. But for the real users, who knew nothing about Word, it is really difficult to finish the tow modules as required in two or even three weeks. Besides, some of them have no idea of what this kind of training is and do not respect the deadline. There are still some people among them who are not interested in the training and give it up completely. To improve such a situation, a planning is created for the learners to fill in their hours of training by week and then signed by their heads. Moreover two of the trainers fix a rendezvous with the learners in the middle of their training to answer their questions.

   3. What are your opinions on LearningSpace?

      According to their responses, LearningSpace is a very good platform. It offers the possibilities to create a new course with the integration of texts, videos and different kinds of exercises, and to modify the existing ones (limited to texts, not videos). But it needs a lot of time to learn all the possible techniques. For part-time trainers like them who have many other equally important duties, it is hard to find time to create courses or modify those which are not well done.
      The navigation in LearningSpace is somewhat difficult and not so logical.

   4. What are your opinions on ENI (the product of Word 97)?

      In their opinion, the program ENI works very well independently. But in LearningSpace:
      Objectives: too simplified
      Pre-tests: useless, since it has no sense of diagnosing the learners' competence before the training. Besides, there isn't always explanation to the responses.
      Texts: generally speaking, they are well done. But there are some mistakes in French and the terms used are not clear and unsuitable for the beginners who know nothing of the environment of a PC (e.g. casse des caractères, point d'insertion, etc).
      Videos: they are well done with the buttons of play, stop and pause which facilitate the use.
      Exercises for practice: they are not able to put in practice what have been learned in the lessons and some of the explanations are not so clear. Besides, the button "Take a look of the solution" never works, thus no solution is available.
      Final exercises: the requirements are sometimes not clear and hard to follow.

   5. What are your opinions on the integration of the two: LearningSpace and ENI?

      The product is somehow carelessly done. An effort is being made to get a "clean" one.

   6. What are the difficulties that you have encountered during the training, either in the classes and after?

      There are many bugs which have not been gotten rid of yet, e.g. connection problems, account problems, difficulties in sending the final exercises to the trainers, too many error messages, many buttons which don't work, etc. For those who are not very much motivated, this is really discouraging.

   7. Compared with the traditional method, what do think of this one?

      In their opinion, it's an excellent method in that it trains a large population in different levels. The learners are responsible for themselves. They can choose what they are interested in and learn in their own rhythm and above all they can follow the course from their own post of work and choose their own time. The content of the course is more enjoying and not so heavy as that of the traditional methods. Besides, it can serve as a reference to the learners when needed (on condition that the program is well done).

   8. Generally speaking, in their opinion, this kind of training can satisfy the needs of their profession. It was able to individualize the training in satisfying a mess demand. It can respond to most of the expectations of a solution FMD (DMT). And it has the required functions, a complete learning scenario, a mediatheque together with documents and the possible learning modes (texts, exercises, auto-evaluation, forum, etc.). For the detailed responses please consult the responses of question 8 given by the four trainers (Attention, they are all in French).

   9. Other opinions:

      Despite the critics given above, this kind of training is a very good method for us. LearningSpace is a very interesting software in that it can personalize the training and adapt to the real needs of the users, since each lesson contains a text of theory, a video, and an exercise, which form a complete course adapted to the taste of everybody.
      It is absolutely necessary for us to take time in finding a way of better using this kind of tool (either improving the present one or find another platform cleanly and well done).
      Anyway, comparing the results with the ones obtained from other kinds of training, we should put all our efforts on this kind of training (FMD / DMT).

• The Program / Product
  • LearningSpace

    Despite the above critics of my colleagues with which I totally agree, we should say that LearningSpace as a platform has many advantages. In LearningSpace, there are two views: one of the trainers / creators, the other of learners.

    The trainers can:
    

    1. create different courses
    2. create or modify the welcome page
    3. construct or modify the four bases of a course:
       In the base of Programme, the trainer or creator can:
       - create documents
       - create the objectives of the training
       - create the Exercise documents
       - specify a date or hour in the document
       - create a personalized document
       - associate an icon to a Programme document
       - authorize or prohibit the debates in class from a Programme document
       - modify the order of the documents
       - modify the titles of the modules
       - notify the learners of a change in a document Programme
       - follow the history of the revision of the documents in Programme

       In the base of Mediatheque, they can:
       - add a media to the base
       - create a document of Mediatheque
       - add key words to the document
       - disactive the print of a document
       - save an Exercise document of Mediatheque into the base Programme
       - Create or modify the definitions of the key words
       - Associate an icon to a document of Mediatheque
       - Authorize or prohibit debates in class from a document of Mediatheque
       - Authorize or prohibit annotations in a document of Mediatheque

       In the base of Profil, they can:
       - create and update the profiles
       - modify the profiles
       - delete a profile
       - use the groups in a course
       - create the profile of a group
       - modify the profile of a group
       - delete the profile of a group

       In the base of Salle de cours (classroom), they can:
       - follow the activities in the base
       - create an exercise of debate
       - make comments on the debates or on the exercises of the learners
       - respond to the documents marked to correct
       - create or modify the profiles of a group in this base
       - launch a debate with a student or a group

    4. They can also create and modify the evaluations, e.g. create, modify or save a question or an evaluation. Besides, they can change the attributes of a course (the name or code of a course, the title of the document base of a course, the type or description of a course, etc.), manage the inscription of a course (add a student, give or change the password of a student, visualize the list of the learners, change the access of the trainer to a course, set up an open or closed course environment, etc.), and administrate a course (the learners' access to a course from Navigator, the replication of a course to another server, the start of a course, delete or save a course, add an existing course to a new place (repertory). There are some other possibilities such as personalize the structure of the document bases of a course, integrate a course from the Domino server to the Web, etc.
    For detailed information, please take a look of the trainer's guide in French.

    In fact the learners can get access to a course either through a Navigator or through Notes. For the project, all the learners get to the course through Navigator. They have all the four bases mentioned above at their disposition.

    The learners have the following tasks to do:
    

    1. get a user name and a password
    2. navigate between the bases
    3. visualize the exercises of a course
    4. launch a debate / ask a question
    5. make comments of the existing debates / questions
    6. ask private questions to the trainer
    7. begin or redo an exercise
    8. modify or update one's own profile
    9. use different view to visualize the documents of a course.
    10. abandon a document from a certain view or from a base of document
    For detailed information, please take a look of the learner guide in French.

    To conclude, LearningSpace, as a platform, has a very good idea behind by taking into consideration of all the necessary elements of on-line teaching and learning. With four main bases/rooms, it is very simple and easy to navigate. At the same time, it is also sophisticated in that as many as possible courses can be created in it. Thus it needs time for the trainers or course creators to learn all the details. Another advantage of it is that it offers the possibility of creating texts and corresponding multimedia which allows different choices to different users. Up to now, the only disadvantage that I found in it is that there is no way to go back directly to the text we read before once we are in the mediatheque. In another word, there is no link between the video and the corresponding text. We are obliged to go around if we want to check the text after looking at the video.

  • ENI - Word 97

    The product of ENI on Word 97 is originally called MEDIA Plus which according to their brochure has the following characteristics:

    1. It is supported by 100% interactive technology to evaluate and/or realize training in the software itself (here Word 97) and thus guarantee the pertinence and efficiency.
    2. It structures the training based on the professional needs and on the tasks to be realized in order to motivate the learners.
    3. It respects the learning rhythm of everyone: the learners are actors rather than sufferers of the training.
    4. It is also equally:
       1. flexible to use: auto-evaluation and plan of learning are proposed, but it is also totally possible to adjust the system (construction of the auto-evaluation and the plan of learning, choice of individual management or by groups, etc.)
       2. simple: no programming is required.
       3. precise: you may know at any time from your administration post the situation of a learner: where he is, what are the results he has just obtained, what remains for him to do, how much time he has used and how much is left for him to use, etc.
       4. live and amusing: the training is done in the form of exercises.

    Therefore, we can see that the original product of ENI has a complete cycle of method which is, pedagogically speaking, logical, flexible and perfect. I was lucky to have tried the NEDIA Plus FORMATION. Here are some interfaces of it from which we can get a general view of the FORMATION.

  • Integration of LearningSpace and ENI by AFOGEC
    From the above we may conclude that the platform LearningSpace and the original product of ENI are very good products. The problems as mentioned above may arise from the integration of the two. For example, in MEDIA Plus FORMATION, there is a solution for each exercise and it works very well. But in the integrated product, the solution never works. Besides there are still many unknown errors in searching or connecting with certain files or documents.
    Unfortunately, we were told that the product can not be modified since ENI is now cooperating directly with LearningSpace version 4 and the content is Office 2000. They have stopped the cooperation with AFOGEC. Thus if the present product is to be used continuously, it has to be modified by the trainers themselves which for the moment is completely out of their reach. We are expecting to take a look of the new product in LearningSpace 4.

• The Method of Training

  At present, in the Palais de Justice, they use a system called All-in-One to treat most of their documents. It's a good system but very old which works in terminals. In this system, it's impossible to electronically communicate with the outside world. It is expected to be changed into the environment of PC and all the MSOffice tools will be introduced by the end of the year. Thus it is urgent to train all the staff to learn the basic tools such as Word and Excel. They are expecting a method which is adapted to their professional needs. This method is:
  

  • focused on using the office tools in the professional environment (e.g. organization of the templates of documents and archives);
  • adjustable according to the learners' knowledge and aptitude;
  • a kind of self-training with the help of tutors;
  • capable of training a large number of people in a relatively short time;
  • offering a course to those people who don't have much free time and who can follow the course at any time and in any place. ...... etc.
    For detailed information please consult the French document of the Pilot Project.
  Theoretically and technically speaking, this method has fulfilled most of the above expectations. We can draw this conclusion from the answers of both the trainers and the learners. The main problem we met during the training is that some real beginners who know nothing about even a PC get easily lost. What's more, some of the technical problems are not resolved even up to now. Thus they don't see the advantages of this training and tend to give it up completely. Other problems are that they are too occupied to follow the course, and it is not easy to motivate people to do it. They come to the presentation class and then put it aside. We have tried every means to get people involved. For example, we created a planning for learners to fill in the time available to follow the course and then signed by their head to assure them the time. In reflecting the whole training process, we found that the teaching method used is probably not suitable for those very beginners. What we have done is to explain and show the training environment all in once during the presentation class: how to navigate in LearningSpace and what we can do in each of the four bases. For those who know nothing about Internet Explorer, this is really confusing and frightening. Taking these into consideration, we think it may be better to use some strict and traditional method. For example, we may divide the whole course into several periods (e.g. by module or by lessons) and require them to come to the classroom several times each week to do everything then and there with the help of the trainers. We are hoping for the best, although for the moment we don't yet have a clean and proper product.

• Some other aspects
  The idea of the new method is very good. With the existing intranet, it is technically speaking easy to realize a training project for the enterprises and administrations. What is more difficult is to change the thinking of people, especially those such as the civil servants or officials. They are used to the old system and don't see the necessity of changing. It takes much more time to introduce new technology to them, especially the elder ones who usually have more powers. Many of them regard this kind of training as an additional work to their daily charges.
  Besides, the trainers are not professional. They are charged with this new task while doing their daily work which is not at all light. Furthermore with a product full of bugs, it is really not easy for them to fulfill the job. They are trying all their best and up to now have done very well.

• Conclusion
  Despite the above difficulties and problems, in general we may say that the project is successful. This is reflected from the answers of both the learners and the trainers. Most of the expectations of the Palais and the Training Center of the Geneva State have been satisfied. We have explained all in detail in our final report of the pilot project which for some reasons I cannot show here.

  Personally speaking, I learned a lot from this internship. It opens a new vision for me. There is a very big market in the field of intranet which is rapidly developing in all sectors of the society. E-training through intranet is happening in big enterprises and departments. Thus many web-based products (either platforms or softwares) are so oriented. But unfortunately for the moment we haven't found one which is satisfying for the Palais.

  I'd like to take advantage of this occasion to express my gratefulness to all my colleagues who have kindly offered me a lot of help, especially in correcting my French, and also to those who offered me this opportunity of intership.

References

     AUTOFORMATION MULTIMEDIA (NEDIA Plus)      ENI editions

     Documents of La solution Formation    La solution Intranet idéale pour maîtriser Microsoft Office 97, by Lotus

Post Script