From Web to Apps in Massive University On-line Learning

Universities today have an incredible variety of opportunities for improving their services, thanks to the new information and communication technologies and opportunities. This paper describes the Politecnico di Torino strategy for online and distance learning, both from the technological and the methodological points of view, focusing on the response to the continuously evolving teaching paradigms: from traditional distance learning models to hybrid and blended models, up to the recent MOOC approaches. The on-line educational environment has been designed for a very large number of users: 33,000 students enrolled in 51 curricula, B.S. and M.S. in different areas of Engineering, and it is suitable both for face-to-face students and remote ones. At present the number of logins per months exceeds 1,000,000 and the system provides access to about half a million of educational documents; in total, the number of downloads per yearis over 10,000,000. The paper specifically describes the video-lecture service, that makes about 3,000 hours of lectures available every year (80 courses are involved) and generates about 1,200,000 video streaming/downloads per year. Mobile devices are becoming more and more the favorite tool for accessing university services and content, and Politecnico di Torino followed the technological evolution to improve its services from the traditional web approach to the mobile App model, passing through a number of intermediate steps such as the responsive web and the mobile web models. The paper describes the strategies and the technological choices used to design and deliver the Educational Portal of Politecnico di Torino, that includes the new official App (PoliTO App). This App allows students, teachers and university staff to access quickly and easily educational content and to use the main university and territorial services. Finally, the paper includes an analysis that shows a positive correlation between the use of video-lectures and the success in the exams, thus validating the proposed educational model.