The Challenges in the Secondary School e-Learning Process

Together with the wide implementation of electronic and blended educational methodologies the family of e-learning systems that support this process also grows. The promising features of such technological novelties are very attractive for many organizations such as universities, businesses and governmental structures. However most of e-learning systems are oriented to support the academic levels of education. Soon after the universities many high schools also have implemented e-learning systems as an additional option to the traditional educational process. The lack of precise analysis of educational needs and matching of those needs to the features of the concrete electronic system may lead to unpredictable flow of the educational process. This is furthermore complicated by non-experienced in e-learning school staff. These facts provoke searching for new decisions and development of completely new e-learning platforms better matching the requirements of the target group. This article presents a new approach in development and implementation of an e-learning platform for the secondary school educational level. The meaning of the term "platform" is redefined and now unifies technological and pedagogical frameworks. The paper is focused on the pedagogical and didactical challenges during the realization and validation of the system. The first step in realization is adequate definition of user requirements. To answer the problem an original data driven bottom up approach was used. A semi-quantitative evaluation of the user requirements was implemented. A numerous e-learning systems were analyzed to look for state of the art educational features to be included. The unique validation process outlines the quality of the integrated platform. The correspondence between the sets of platform features and the user expectations is proved by "Case records" methodology. This methodology extends the capabilities of Walkthrough approach. The results from the study are applied in the project "UNITE" - partially supported by the European Community under the Information Society Technologies (IST) priority of the 6th Framework Programme for R&D.