1. Efodi - eLearning Platform Elisa Communications Oyj Content Based Solutions Virpi Elers IBS/Virpi Elers

2. New Challenges caused by information society... • A need for life long learning - you have to learn new knowledge and skills every day • Learning needs of adults increase and diverge • A need for more flexible/open solutions in learning - independence of time, place, speed etc. • A need to integrate learning to every-day-work IBS/Virpi Elers

3. National information Strategy for education and research 2000-2004 • A collection of goals and visions for the future concerning possibilities for education and development of network based learning. • Systematic development based on research of learning environments will be the key issue, which is further divided to six development sub issues: • Information society readiness for everyone • information society knowledge and skills for teachers and instructors • Knowledge of professionals in information and content industry • Establishment of network based studying • Electronic publishing, analyzing and distribution of research information and learning material • Strengthening the structures of information society IBS/Virpi Elers

4. Efodi - The Background • Efodi is based on the Virtual Language School developed as a result of a research project in National Multimedia Program (KAMU) sponsored by TEKES. • The participants of the project were: • HPY Research Center • Amiedu • YLE • The project ended on 1998 after which HPY Research Center continued the development. IBS/Virpi Elers

5. Efodi - eLearning Platform • Efodi is an eLearning Platform designed to suit the different kind of network-based educational needs of a company or a school. • The main functions: Content management Learning management and collaboration User management IBS/Virpi Elers

6. Content management • Efodi provides tools for a tutor (or a teacher) to create hierarchic structures to contain a collection of learning objects for a particular course. • The learning objects can be placed either to Efodi -server or to any server accessible through Internet without sign-on. • IMS Content Packaging Information Model is used to define a standardized set of structures and metadata that can be used to exchange content. • A simple HTML page editor is integrated IBS/Virpi Elers

7. Collaboration and team work • For a group of students Efodi provides tools for collaboration: • a group calendar, • discussion forum, • bulletin board, • internal mail system and • shared files and memos. IBS/Virpi Elers

8. Some further properties • Efodi contains also tools for adminstration of the users and user groups. • Creating tests and questionnaires is made easy by providing an integrated tool (QuizIt), which also checks the students answers against the right answers tutor has specified. • Short messages (SMS) from tutor to students or from student to tutor or other students. • A tutor can get reports of students activity IBS/Virpi Elers

9. Development today and visions for tomorrow • The further development of Efodi is carried out in a research and development department (Content Based Solutions) of Elisa Communications. • The new Version 3.0 is released on September 2001. • Development Visions: • Selling and buying digital educational content • Mobile solutions for collaboration • Comprehensive solution (integration of value added services) IBS/Virpi Elers

10. A vision... Corporate portals, intranets etc. Content Content Corporate UMS eLearning platform Corporation Content providers Content Content Collaboration tools Content Platform provider IBS/Virpi Elers