Formal and Informal Lifelong Learning in a Virtual Communities Platform

The paper presents our experience as designers, developers and administrators of an e-learning system used by the Faculty of Economics of the University of Trento and from the Autonomous province of Trento (Italy). We recently managed the evolution of the system towards the provision of a new Personal Learning Space to the users. In this moment the platform is in a phase of complete redevelopment and the final objective will be the adaption of the typical approaches of the web 2.0 and social networks into an e-learning formal platform. In particular one of the objectives will be to integrate an informal learning metaphor into a classic formal one. The term informal learning has been used in education field, in particular in the adult education, for several reasons; one of them is providing to the learners a greater flexibility in the learning process. This approach highlights that the lessons from the others could have a great social significance, but implies that the education agencies (e.g. the universities or the training institutions) have the capability to increase the socialisation level into the learning environment. Following the informal learning approach is necessary to focus the attention to the learning that takes place in the spaces surrounding the activities that take place in a much wider variety of settings than the formal education and training. This approach is not a substitute of the formal learning but could be complementary, integrating the personal experiences and the learning exchanges with the other participants. We will introduce the problems related to the integration of these two different logics into a single e-learning platform (learning spaces and social networks), and how to connect these two worlds into one single architecture. The system that we have developed, named On Line Communities, provides the idea of virtual communities as pillars of the interaction mechanisms provided by the platform to the users.