Category: News

Five years ago a revolution began in our industry. The SCORM standard became yesterday’s news, and something else stole the limelight: Experience API, otherwise known as TinCan API, or xAPI. It promised great things: a simple, flexible specification that connects the dots between a person’s or group’s learning experiences, wherever they happen, online or offline.

Avallain immediately saw the potential. We got involved early, and made it part of our own research and development. So what has been our experience of Experience API? Does it do what it says on the TinCan, or is it all technological hype?

What is Experience API?

Experience API is an open source specification established by Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL), the people who oversee SCORM. Effectively, it defines a common language between any environments in which a person or group might gather experience or learn. That includes less obvious ones like offline learning, social learning, virtual worlds and gaming. The specification is not bound by hardware, software or any kind of context. It takes up where SCORM left off, capturing our more modern experience of technology: one that is blended, mobile and complex.

Think, for example, of a teacher who wants to use a learning app to illustrate a point to their class. It is not part of the school LMS, but it is relevant and useful, and the learning outcomes provide a helpful measure of progress, too. With the Experience API at work, students should be able to use the app and have their achievements captured in the LMS. They could collaborate over it on a social platform, and have that interaction captured, too. Then, when the class next meets to discuss and interact about their experiences, the outcomes of that offline discussion can be added to the record. None of the learning is lost – not for the learner, nor for the teacher.

How does it work?

This is the elegant part. Experience API uses the same form of language that we have always used to describe and record our experiences:

actor + verb + object

Or to put it simply:

I        did        this

When you think about it, all of our actions and achievements can be distilled into a statement that takes this form:

actor      verb       object

she       visited          ?

he         scored          ?

Dave     viewed        ?

they      mastered    ?

This is the basis of Experience API: actions and achievements captured in very simple statements. When those statements need to be recorded, they are sent and held securely in a repository called a Learning Record Store (LRS). LRSs can be inside a Learning Management System or they can stand alone, but two things are common to them all: the language they use and the fact that they are able to communicate with other LRSs.

In these simple ways, Experience API promises to create a new, free and meaningful dialogue between the different places in which we learn. Nothing of our learning journey should be lost, and with modern analytics, there could be much to gain. This greater insight into the full spread of our learning experiences could tell us things like how and where we learn best, our weaknesses and how they are changing, our emerging interests, blind spots and aptitudes, as well as what content works best in which context.

So, what do we think of Experience API?

We have always seen the potential. We engaged early and developed our own LRS. We made sure that content generated in Avallain Author supports the standard. We know that Experience API is taking the industry in the right direction, towards the joined-up journey that learning should be.

But it is not a panacea. So far, we have a grammar for this new common language, but not the vocabulary. It will only work to full effect once we are all using standard actors, verbs and objects. Neither is compliance with the specification an end in itself, it is a beginning. Two systems may both be compliant, but that does not make their communication meaningful, or guarantee their combined performance. And if an LRS is always part of a larger, interconnected architecture, where should the overarching analysis of attainment and behaviours take place, and using what tools? In other words, most of the creative and technical challenges remain, even if the possibilities just got more interesting.

Diverse learning: the future beyond SCORM

Experience API offers us a way to leave behind some of the limitations of SCORM, and embrace a more diverse learning experience: one that is digital, mobile, recreational, social, offline, lifelong. That is as it should be, and we will do all we can to work with the specification, and to help it mature. But it must not become a distraction from the things that underpin a great digital learning experience: inspirational content, creative collaboration, robust pedagogy and exceptional design.

That is what Avallain is here for: to deliver for its clients these things that truly drive learning, and along the way, make best use of new technologies like Experience API.

Today is International Literacy Day, instituted by UNESCO to highlight the importance of literacy to individuals and communities. In the fifty years since the day it was first celebrated, UNESCO has reported real improvements in literacy, and last year estimated the global rate to be 86.3%. But this statistic belies the exclusion and inequality experienced in some parts of the world and some sections of society. In sub-Saharan Africa, UNESCO estimates the literacy rate to be only 64.0%, and everywhere, men are still far more likely to achieve literacy than women. For those of us working in education, the literacy challenge remains very real, and so today we thought we should look at the role of educational technology in this crucial field, through the prism of our own work.

In its recent report Harnessing the Potential of ICTs, UNESCO itself points to “valuable examples of how ICTs can be used creatively and innovatively”¹ in adult literacy. No fewer than four of the twenty-six projects in the report involve Avallain technology and we will focus upon these to show the challenge, our response, and the outcome. As you will see, each project involves content generated by the programme’s own staff in Avallain Author, which was then delivered to learners on the Avallain Unity platform.

KENYA: community empowerment, literacy and the environment

Challenges: only 75% of children in Kenya graduate from grade 4, of whom around 70% are able to read. Almost two-thirds (61%) of all illiterate adults are women. The society faces significant environmental threats, for which its communities are ill-prepared, partly due to the education gap. The country’s limited infrastructure and electricity supply act as a barrier to the delivery of ICT-based education.

Response: in 2009, Avallain partnered with CORDIO, an organization providing community training with a focus on literacy and the environment. Avallain Author enabled CORDIO’s field workers to create simulations based on real-life community issues and challenges. Working offline on “100 dollar” laptops, which have a long battery life, learners might be asked to fill in forms, complete activities and solve problems, all in support of a practical goal. True to community tradition, learners do not work alone but in groups, supported by facilitators who encourage group discussion and collaboration. All of these activities promote environmental awareness, while improving literacy, numeracy, language and ICT skills.

Outcomes: according to the UNESCO report, the programme has delivered marked benefits, particularly for women. Previously illiterate women are now able to read and write basic sentences and use ICT, and their numeracy and language skills have improved. In these ways the programme has also enhanced the employability of participants, while improving the community’s internal communications, and engagement with wider society.

GERMANY: “Ich Will Lernen” – personalized, lifelong learning for all

Challenges: Despite Germany’s impressive educational record, 9% of students are unable to complete their studies. Because of this, in 2004 an estimated 4 million young people and adults were functionally illiterate. Stigma and family commitments make re-entry into formal education extremely difficult.

Response: The German Adult Education Association (GAEA) launched the “Ich Will Lernen” (“I want to Learn”) programme, to deliver lifelong basic and secondary education via the Internet. The resulting free online portal offers youths and adults daily learning packages in the subjects of German, Math and English, selected from more than 31,000 activities authored in Avallain Author. The learning environment, built on Avallain Unity, delivers flexible, self-regulated courses at 16 learning levels. Students may choose from online-only learning with online facilitators, or courses based at one of around 1,000 adult education centres across Germany. The programme benefits from a rigorous process of continuous review, driven by facilitators and learners, which keeps it fresh and responsive in a rapidly changing digital and social landscape.

Outcomes: Encouraged by the portal’s anonymity and personalized learning experience, approximately 500,000 learners have used it to develop their skills since 2004. The programme continues to build for the future, and has trained hundreds of trainers and facilitators. In addition, more than 1,400 teachers across Germany continue to use it in their courses. It has won three prestigious awards for its work: the Comenius medal, the European e-Learning Award, and the national Digita.

IRELAND: fighting the stigma of adult learning, with WriteOn

Challenges: Despite a period of investment lasting almost 20 years, a recently released OECD survey of adult skills suggests that 4.3% of Irish adults are below level 1 proficiency in literacy, and 13.2% are only at level 1. The stigma of learning as an adult, and a lack of faith in formal education, both play a large part in excluding potential learners from the education system.

Response: In 2008, the National Adult Literacy Agency (NALA) launched an online distance learning initiative called WriteOn. NALA’s team of educators used Avallain Author to develop the content for the portal, which launched in just 5 months. The learning environment, delivered on Avallain Unity, first assesses the student’s level of ability, and then supports them with structured online activities, digital workbooks and online one-to-one tutoring to proficiency levels 2 and 3. The workbooks and courses employ practical, real-world scenarios to ensure that learners are able to apply their skills. They may also pursue topics of particular interest to drive their learning, rather than being confined to a single path. Students are encouraged to work online only, or to use WriteOn as a blended programme, supported by one of 180 learning centres across Ireland. Each year, the service benefits from three rounds of internal and external review, ensuring that it remains responsive and current.

Outcomes: since its inception, more than 32,000 students have enrolled, and 2,500 of those have gone on to obtain 14,500 certificates at literacy levels 2 and 3. UNESCO reports that WriteOn has achieved “nationwide recognition” and highlights its “highly personalized approach” allowing learners to learn in a way that suits their lifestyles. The report concludes that WriteOn has done much to overcome the “stigmatized image” of literacy learning and the “negative associations” of formal education.

TURKEY: offering a second chance at literacy and numeracy

Challenges: In Turkey the formal education system struggles with extremely high school absence rates, averaging at 73 days per student, per year. All too many students fail to complete their education, and in 2012, there were 3.8 million adults who had never completed primary education. 2.8 million of them could not read or write, and 80% of those were women.

Response: in 2011, the Mother Child Education Foundation approached Avallain to help them develop the “Web-based Literacy Programme” (WBLP), a free online portal aimed at boosting literacy and numeracy skills among adults. Its 5,500 activities, created in Avallain Author, deliver 360 hours of instruction: the entire content of the equivalent face-to-face adult literacy programme. WBLP prepares students for two levels of literacy exams, which act as a gateway back into formal education. The programme also responds to the 96% of students surveyed who expressed a desire to improve their ICT skills. The Avallain Unity platform provides a structured and easy-to-use learning experience, supported by intuitive navigation and tools such as text-to-speech. With the help of online tutors, 75% of students learn entirely online, overcoming factors such as family obligations or distance, which might otherwise exclude them from education. The programme also acts as a blended solution, working with face-to-face literacy programmes in adult education centres.

Outcomes: By November 2013, WBLP had 6,800 students, of whom 75% were women. 52% of all learners had never gone to school. A pilot study in 2012 showed that WBLP students were able to develop their ICT skills while achieving the same literacy and numeracy proficiencies as those in less accessible, more costly face-to-face classes. Many WBLP students have taken the second level literacy exam, re-opening their access to formal education.

Re-opening an avenue to education and self-improvement

It is heartening to reflect on these achievements in the field of adult literacy, but we know that there is much more to be done. These and other projects tell us that educational technology, when done well, provides unique opportunities to overcome the stigma and exclusion that so often surrounds adult learning. It offers the flexibility to fit with the busy, responsible lives of adults, wherever they are, and for many, it re-opens an avenue to education and self-improvement.

Our engagement in Adult Literacy began in 2004, and this year we are deepening our commitment by establishing the Avallain Foundation.

¹Ulrike Hanemann, Introduction, Harnessing the Potential of ICTs: Literacy and Numeracy Programmes Using Radio, TV, Mobile Phones, Tablets and Computers

Avallain has joined forces with Westermann, one of the leading publishers of educational media in Germany, to develop a primary math learning environment that supports truly differentiated learning, allowing teachers to respond to the needs of individuals.

Denken und Rechnen (“Thinking and Numeracy”) is a new-generation learning platform with the capacity to offer unique learning paths to individuals or groups in a class. Teachers are offered insights into learner progress, competence and skills, along with the tools to intervene where necessary to offer additional support or guidance. The environment enables them to organize and assign digital resources to respond to specific weaknesses – or to build on strengths – while managing the overall progress of the class. For students, Denken und Rechnen offers enhanced, interactive versions of the full content of the textbook, with tips, instant feedback and information about progress and developing skills. The experience is optimized for tablets as well as PCs, to facilitate learning at home as well as in class.

Developed on the Avallain Unity platform, with content delivered by Avallain Author,Denken und Rechnen was produced in less than a year, benefitting from the flexibility and integration of the two solutions. With highly granular content, authored digitally and delivered seamlessly to the learning environment, Denken und Rechnen offers tight integration between print and digital editions to support teachers, however they wish to teach.

Dr. Isabel Schneider, Group Leader Elementary School Foreign Languages, Digital Media at the Westermann Group, said:

Denken und Rechnen responds directly to the challenges and opportunities faced by today’s teachers. Through the flexibility of the environment, we hope to have created an experience that enriches and supports teaching, and that enhances learning through a more diverse and sophisticated classroom.

Ignatz Heinz, MD of Avallain AG, commented:

We are delighted to collaborate with Westermann to offer a meaningful, flexible response to the current reality in schools. We believe that Denken und Rechnen provides true support for differentiated learning, by giving teachers the insights and tools they need. As ever, we are very pleased to see Avallain Unity and Avallain Author responding effectively to specific market and user needs, and we look forward to working with Westermann in other content and subject areas.

Based in Braunschweig, the Westermann Group is one of the significant providers of educational media in Germany. Operating in its three core areas of publishing, printing and services, the group provides comprehensive media solutions in the fields of education and knowledge, and publishes educational materials for all school types and subjects across all federal states.

In a recent article for the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE), Dale Basye raised an important question: are the terms personalized learning, differentiated learning and individualized learning meaningfully different? Are they interchangeable, or are they distinctive terms, describing alternate approaches to education?

The answer, argues Basye, is that the terms are very different, and the difference is important. The unique interests and needs of students require diverse approaches to teaching and learning; and crucially, only by using a consistent vocabulary for these approaches can educators share best practice and deploy the right tools to create what Basye describes as “profoundly dynamic educational experiences”. So, what do these terms mean, and how do the three approaches differ?

Differentiated learning: who is the learner, and what do they need?

Even where there are overarching learning goals, teachers may still vary their instruction to meet the individual needs and preferences of students, or a group of similar students. This differentiation might involve varying the learning path, product, process, content or even subject matter in order to address the specific learning profile of students. This is not about writing a different lesson plan for each student, but it is about adapting the curriculum, varying the level of challenge, and altering the path to learning. This flexibility makes the learning experience more relevant, engaging and effective.

Individualized learning: at what pace does the learner learn?

As well as varying how a student learns, teachers may govern when they learn, by changing the pace of progress through the curriculum. The benefits of this individualized learning are many: students may spend more time on a challenging topic, move quickly past one they have mastered, or dive deeply into a topic they want to explore in more detail. All this helps the teachers to achieve the prescribed academic goals, without losing anything – or anyone – along the way.

Personalized learning: how might the learner learn for themselves?

Basye describes personalized learning as the “whole enchilada”: neither differentiated nor individualized, but both. It is instruction that is varied to meet the specific learning needs of students, and paced according to their readiness and interest. But it’s more than that. In true personalized learning, the student plays a part in their own instruction, choosing activities, resources or learning paths that best suit their interests and abilities. This is true learner-centred education, and so for teachers, it represents a stark departure from tradition, placing them in the role of guide or facilitator, rather than instructor. Given the unique demands of each student engaged in personalized learning, educational technology would appear to have a particularly important role to play. So that, in a nutshell, is the meaning of the terms, and the differences between them. In the conclusion of his article, Basye remarks that educational technology, when employed properly, has a role to play in all of these forms of instruction. We agree with him, so what exactly are we doing about it?

Measurement and response: the promise of technology

Essentially, each of these approaches involves managing individuality, which in technology terms, means managing vast amounts of constantly changing data. This is just what computers are made for. Digital learning resources, and the paths through them, can be altered by teachers to deliver the differentiated and individualized learning experiences we have discussed. There is much that can be measured and captured by computers in the learning process, such as scores, behaviours, interests, error types, speed and so on, and these advances have been exploited with some success by adaptive learning technologies to meet the demands of personalized learning. But does this really mean that out-of-the-box technology can address fully all of these learning approaches?

A collaboration between educators, students and technology

At Avallain, we recognize that the picture is more complex. Our technologies have all of the capabilities we have described, but we are aware that real digital learning requires a successful collaboration between educators, students and technology. A technology designed to deliver differentiated learning, but that places too much pressure upon teachers, or fails to address their specific concerns, will not work. Neither will a solution that promises true personalized learning, but that makes too many assumptions about the self-motivation or tech-savvy of the particular students, or that does not call enough upon the guidance of their teachers.

Solutions with uniqueness in mind

Avallain has always focused on devising very specific solutions for very specific audiences. Avallain Unity and Avallain Author are among the most flexible in the industry, because we build our platforms with the uniqueness of learning experiences in mind. Primary learners in Mexico, Academics in Oxford and German-learning immigrants learn with Avallain solutions, all using custom interfaces and guidance based on the same solid technology. Across the world, our technology is being used to deliver the full range of differentiated, individualized and personalized learning in a way that is meaningful and manageable for specific groups of teachers and students.

Basye finishes his piece with his comment that a common vocabulary will help educators to harness the tools they need to deliver “profoundly dynamic educational experiences”. We agree, and we believe that the best educational technology results from a creative dialogue between providers and educators, based on that common vocabulary, but also the specific need.

That is the Avallain approach, and that is how we build our technology.

Recent years have seen the invention of a plethora of new digital media, from self-marking activities to smart ebooks, from podcasts to animations and games. But even now, the print components of a course are often favoured by teachers and students as the crucial hub of a course, even when enhanced by these digital innovations.

Avallain has great respect for print, partly in recognition of educational tradition, and also acknowledging, as engineers, the technological superiority of print as an undemanding, always operational, visual and haptic carrier of information. Nevertheless we understand that for publishers, the duplication of effort between print and digital production creates a significant strain on time and budgets. It stands to reason that removing this duplication would enable the industry to give greater focus to creativity of commissioning, authorship and design, and to make full use of the strengths of each medium, separately, and in combination.

With these as our principles, we have long researched the ideal blend of print and digital workflows. This journey led us to our partner Seinet, a provider based in Madrid that has its origins in editorial content management systems for print magazines, but now provides smart content management to support the diverse needs of modern publishing. Their outstanding Xtent solution is centred upon an abstracted content database, and achieves flatpanel layouting, InDesign integration and many input and output transformations at scale and speed. Combining this power with Avallain Author, our authoring solution, provides something unique: transparent editing, output to print and digital, with the kind of version, state and permissions control you would expect from an advanced content management system.

Consider, then, a typical multi-component course involving textbooks and accompanying interactive content for apps and a learning platform. Discover a typo? One intervention fixes it for reprint, for download and immediate use online. Need to modify a heading in the app and carry that change through to the learning platform and the next print edition? One edit does it all. Keen to create new ancillary content for digital and then print a loose-leaf edition to go with it? We have you covered. And all this within a controlled, tracked workflow that retains the quality and editorial rigor expected in great publishing.

This integration of Avallain Author and Xtent is already being piloted at our major publishing clients, and we are excited by early results. If you would like to join the blended publishing revolution, please contact us to enter the program.

Ignacio Megasias, CEO of Seinet, says:

We are delighted to be working with Avallain to bring the best of content management to a new kind of educational publishing: one which frees authors and editors to focus on the quality and creativity of the content, while intelligent tools manage publication to a range of media and devices. In this way we hope to make educational publishing more efficient, more responsive, and at the same time, more innovative.”

Max Bondi, Product Manager of Avallain Author, says:

The pioneering blend of Avallain’s expertise in dynamic digital authoring, and Seinet’s pedigree in smart content management, promises a new era in educational publishing. Our integrated service provides publishers with new efficiencies, while extending their reach across print and digital. We are looking forward to involving other clients in our pilot project over the coming months.

Seinet is an independent, privately owned company based in Madrid, providing publishing platforms to the global education and media industries. Founded in 2001 with the mission to deliver a “create once, publish anywhere” content management solution, Seinet has moved from traditional print media to become the only content management system provider to integrate both publishing and e-learning functionality.

InDesign is a Trademark of Adobe.

A new exam-revision mobile application from Oxford University Press, developed in collaboration with Avallain, promises to transform the way children prepare for Kenya’s primary and secondary exams.

The ExamPoa app delivers on-demand bundles of quizzes, notes and model exams, which offer instant feedback, allowing students to test themselves, hone their studies and address areas of weakness. The app breaks new ground in distance learning for Kenyan schoolchildren, using mobile technology to reach learners throughout the vast country, and to offer them a more flexible and responsive form of study. The quizzes, notes and model exams may be downloaded and used offline, freeing learners to complete their revision anytime, anywhere. Prepared initially to support learners of English and Science at primary level, and English, Biology and History at secondary level, ExamPoa will expand over time to offer support in other subject areas.

James Ogolla, Marketing Manager at Oxford University Press East Africa said:

ExamPoa addresses an increasing demand from Kenya’s young students for digital resources that offer a level of feedback and support that is not always possible in class. Our engaging but rigorous resources, combined with Avallain’s reliable, intuitive technology, truly answer that call. We look forward to expanding the service to other areas of the curriculum.

We are delighted to have collaborated with Oxford University Press to develop such an innovative and valuable service for Kenya’s students,” commented Ursula Suter, Co-Founder of Avallain. “We have worked hard to ensure that our technology is appropriate to the needs of Kenya’s students, allowing them to study on a range of devices, with or without an Internet connection. But as ever, it is not the technology that we wish to be the focus, but the excitement and reward of a great learning experience. We know from early feedback from schoolchildren that ExamPoa is proving worthy of its Kiswahili name: Poa, meaning ‘good’ or ‘cool’!

Established in 1954, Oxford University Press East Africa is a leading educational publisher in the East and Central Africa region, specializing in school textbooks and reference works. It is a branch of the International Division of Oxford University Press.

Avallain is a world leader in the provision of educational technology. Co-founded by Ursula Suter in 2002, it has provided consultancy and online tools to governments, corporations, educational publishers and institutions around the globe. Avallain’s subsidiary in Nairobi, Kenya has produced a range of groundbreaking educational products for the local education system.

In collaboration with Avallain, University of Dayton Publishing (UDP) operates UDP Access, a state of the art learning management system that adapts to the real-life circumstances of students and teachers in Central and South America.

UDP Access overflows with the stimulating learning content that you would expect from a creative initiative involving an innovative publisher and Avallain: enhanced digital books, unique digital readers, online projects and, of course, hundreds of interactive activities enriched with diverse media and great design. But what makes this environment even more exceptional is its accessibility. While UDP Access is fully online, it is also available for download as a companion app for tablets and desktops, so that it may be enjoyed offline.

Lauren Robbins, Director of Publishing and Professional Services ELT at Grupo SM, notes:

Our relationship with Avallain has allowed our digital offer to evolve from simple interactive content, to our own ground breaking platform that supports users both online and – as is still typical in most classrooms – offline. We are delighted to have achieved a suite of digital services that fully supports teachers and learners, without technical distractions or obstacles.

Ursula Suter, Co-Founder of Avallain remarked:

Our engagement in Mexico started in 2013, led by our engaging and exciting work with UDP. Since then, our decision to invest in a local support presence has been vindicated again and again, by our great collaboration with UDP, by the general growth of the digital market in the region, and by the enthusiasm with which creative and targeted solutions are received.

University of Dayton Publishing is a publisher of print and digital ELT/ESL courses and support materials for preschool, primary and secondary schools in Mexico and Latin America. It is the result of the strategic alliance between the University of Dayton – a private university in Dayton, Ohio, USA – and the SM Group.

Are you struggling to publish rich, innovative products to an ever-increasing number of devices? Do you find it a challenge to control costs while maintaining compatibility with thousands of smartphones and tablets? More than ever, digital publishers are facing the risk of TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) spiralling out of control and drawing investment away from creative authorship and publishing. With Avallain Author and Unity, you can innovate and keep control at the same time.

Publish once, deploy many times

Modern students and educators expect to learn and teach anywhere and anytime, making the most of the past decade’s explosion in mobile technologies. For publishers and content producers, this is both a commercial opportunity, and a threat. There are new providers and devices appearing for each niche in the marketplace, splintering distribution and pricing models, and creating ever more quality control demands. However, investment budgets for digital publishers do not tend to grow at the same rate.

What is needed is a technology that takes care of compatibility and delivery, and allows digital publishers to stay focused on innovation in content and interfaces. Avallain has spent years researching and innovating in some of the most challenging infrastructure environments, such as Africa, South America – and not least – the still poorly-connected and equipped classrooms in continental Europe. We have delivered digital learning across many technical divides, while keeping a lid on costs. Avallain’s current publishing technologies benefit from all this experience and represent a third generation solution to the “publish once, deploy many times” challenge.

A technology in layers: making the complex, simple.

Avallain Author gives publishers the means to prepare the highest quality learning resources with a customized user experience, then quality check them, and deploy them offline and online to desktops, tablets and smartphone apps. These apps may be either standalone offerings like the Award Winning Mazes for Richmond (Santillana), or integrated within the Avallain Unity learning platform as a standard companion app, as in UDP Access environment created for the University of Dayton Publishing (Grupo SM). Content generated in Avallain Author may also be published in standard formats into third party applications.

To enable publishers to author and QA once and deploy many times, Avallain’s technical architecture separates the presentation, interaction and communication features of the content from the destination environment and the native code needed for each situation. xAPI (TinCan) communication is employed to allow seamless synchronization between the devices and platforms and data warehouses. The underlying cross-platform technology is one of the current leading industry standards. It operates on existing and forthcoming devices, such as Raspberry Pi and Automobile Dashboard systems. The architecture works for any type of Avallain Author content, from digital books to collections of simple learning objects, to more complex, bespoke creations like the Richmond Mazes.

Cost-effective, stimulating learning – whatever the device

Developing and maintaining learning applications across the expanding technology landscape, while keeping control of cost and quality, is perhaps the single greatest commercial challenge faced by digital publishers. Avallain is the ideal partner to help you meet that challenge. Already, many of the world’s leading educational publishers and institutions are using Avallain Author to save time and money. And that is time and money that they are now able to spend doing what they do best: creating a viable, differentiated and stimulating learning experience – whatever the device.

As one of the key publishers for French as a Foreign Language (FLE) throughout the Francophone world, Éditions Maison des Langues (EMDL) is no stranger to innovation and driving new standards. However its newly-launched Espace Virtuel, a French language learning environment developed by Avallain and prepared on Avallain platforms, is set to change the way the French language is learned – and taught.

EMDL places its relationship with teachers at the heart of its publishing processes, using teacher workshops, surveys and conferences to ensure that its courses and methodologies are the most current and practical available. This approach has been critical to the development of Espace Virtuel as a responsive, integrated service, and one which embraces the principle of a ‘flipped classroom’, while also supporting traditional classroom learning. Searches filtered by grammar and language point allow teachers to assemble the resources that best suit their course and their class, and then monitor the performance of individual students, wherever the activities are completed. The bank of self-correcting activities and video resources will be updated regularly, making Espace Virtuel into an endlessly evolving service, capable of responding to new demands, trends and developments. In September, it will also be made available on computer, tablet and smartphone, ensuring that it is accessible wherever and whenever there is an opportunity to learn.

Emilio Marill, EMDL’s Head of Digital Publishing commented: “The Internet and ICT can all too easily become a source of stress and extra work for teachers, rather than a help. Espace Virtuel provides teachers with a one-stop tool, allowing them to extend the walls of the classroom while offering a versatile, turnkey solution for use in class. It represents a change of mentality: we no longer wish to offer a range of partitioned, disconnected products but instead, an integral service of assistance and support. We are delighted with all that Avallain’s technology and expertise has helped us to achieve.”

Ignatz Heinz, Managing Director of Avallain, said: “EMDL’s Espace Virtuel is a true success story, both as a responsive and dynamic learning environment, and as a partnership between firms of shared vision. We are certain that the quality and depth of Espace Virtuel, along with EMDL’s commitment to ongoing publishing and enhancement, will establish it as a unique and important addition to FLE education. Avallain will continue to play its part, providing Avallain Author for the preparation of premium content, and Avallain Unity to complement those resources with reliable and helpful educational tools.”

Éditions Maison des Langues is a leading publisher of language learning materials for high schools, colleges and adult learners. Supported by commercial partnerships with the renowned publishing houses Klett and Difusión, EMDL publishes courses and supporting materials for French, Italian, German and Spanish language learning.

Avallain’s co-founder, Ursula Suter, has been invited by The International Conference for E-Learning in the Workplace (ICELW) to present her vision for a revolution in the way educational resources are authored and delivered.

Speaking this week at Columbia University in New York, the Swiss educationalist and entrepreneur will outline how innovations in e-learning offer opportunities to enhance training for an increasingly dispersed and pressured workplace. Suter will explain how in the past, many attempts to deliver relevant and responsive online training have been frustrated by considerations of cost, time and complexity. She will then show how Avallain’s online authoring platform, Avallain Author, and its sister learning platform, Avallain Unity, allow institutions and training professionals to overcome these constraints.

In her conference session on June 17th, Suter will describe how Avallain Author allows training professionals to choose activity types and formats that best suit the material, and then, using the unique innovation of “Design Packs”, deliver them in a bespoke design and interface. Drawing examples from a range of Avallain projects, Suter will explain how a standards-based, modular architecture means that training may be delivered seamlessly to multiple devices and platforms. But she will argue that the flexibility need not end there. Suter will show how the Avallain Unity platform picks up where Avallain Author leaves off, providing a unique object-oriented approach to learning management, so that high quality, responsive content is delivered in an equally responsive environment.

To close her session, Suter will present experience and research drawn from Avallain’s a-ACADEMY, an e-learning programme for schools in Kenya endorsed by the Kenyan government. She will show a-ACADEMY’s substantive, measurable results, proving the real impact of properly devised and delivered e-learning.

“At Avallain, we believe that technology must never eclipse inspiring and effective educational design,” comments Suter, who has been working in the field of e-learning since 1997. “We wanted to develop tools that empower educators to devise, shape and deliver online learning to suit their changing needs, without the involvement of technologists. I welcome this opportunity to show how these tools are already delivering real outcomes in a variety of educational contexts.”

The ICELW is an international conference bringing together the corporate and academic worlds to realize the vast potential of e-learning in business and industry. This year’s conference will be held at Columbia University in New York, from June 15th-17th.