CLIX School application in classrooms of German federal state North-Rhine-Westphalia

This initiative for making a learning platform available in schools goes back to a provision of the education authority in North Rhine-Westphalia for students at vocational and specialized schools (as well as places of general education) to acquire greater skills in self-learning in the future. The plan makes provision for around 480 school periods to be reorganized as self-learning periods, a legal requirement which will come into force after autumn 2005. In this legal requirement, regio iT has identified a possible expansion of its commercial activities and positioned itself so as to be able to make an early bid as provider of a local (and possibly land-wide) learning platform, not necessarily restricted to use in schools, but as an e-learning offering for all levels of local authorities, local government agencies and other local government institutions, such as foundations or associations.

In the area of school education, regio iT’s target group comprises all kinds of schools, i.e. schools providing general education, such as elementary schools, the full range of secondary schools, and special needs‘ schools, as well as schools offering higher education and vocational schools, including vocational courses at vocational schools and technical colleges.
By the end of 2005 around 10 schools with a total of around 5,000 users (10% of whom are teaching staff) should be connected, and mid-term, further schools covering a total of 120,000 users are planned to be included.

Production of the learning contents to be provided on the learning platform will be the remit of the schools, supported by the functionality provided by the Learning Management System CLIX (in particular, the wide-ranging options for creating tests and exercises). In addition, through regio iT schools will be able to acquire licenses for the rapid authoring tool LECTURNITY. This tool enables the production of high-grade multimedia learning contents featuring animation, sound and video, and demands no knowledge of technical development.
As early as May, IMC AG, together with the educational publisher BILDUNGSVERLAG EINS (leading publisher of vocational textbooks and subsidiary of the Dutch publishing corporation Wolters-Kluwer), a joint information event highlighting the possibilities of supporting classroom teaching with e-learning (as detailed in IMC’s press release dated 6 May 2005) was held in a similar context to the current introduction of CLIX for regio iT.

Frank Milius, board member with responsibility for products at IMC AG, welcomes this development in North Rhine-Westphalia: “With its clearly defined milestones, the progressive local government in North Rhine-Westphalia is offering students and teaching staff in this German state a great opportunity. Apart from the actual curriculum, which can now also be taught at least in part notwithstanding missed lessons and cancelled classes, the use of our learning platform CLIX will also enhance the ability of students to learn autonomously and to deepen or revise what they have learned. Schoolchildren, and perhaps more importantly teaching staff, will also be able to enhance their abilities in handling IT. Our belief is that within the next two to five years, a majority of German states will be looking to implement projects of this kind. Which is why we shall also be making sure that the future development of our products CLIX and LECTURNITY will be tailored more closely to the requirements of schools?”

Dr. Wolfgang Kraemer, spokesman for the board at IMC AG, also assesses the market for learning management solutions for schools as very promising: “Having completed a number of pilot projects in individual schools across various German states, in which our main aim was to learn what basic demands schools and teachers would place on a learning solution, the project with regio iT will be the start signal for us to provide federal states and local authorities with attractive offerings and proposals for the application of e-learning in schools. In our view, regio iT is a flagship project, providing an excellent model for others in the educational field.”