ILIAS in Public Administration

Yesterday, I had the chance to speak about ILIAS at the Linuxtag in Berlin. The focus of the conference slot was on how open source software is used in Germany's public administration. A few cities (Munich, Schwäbisch Hall) have successfully migrated from Microsoft to Linux in the last years. The department of foreign affairs (Auswärtiges Amt) is a trailblazer for open source software among German ministries. And I noticed that there are a lot of departments and public institutions that are already using ILIAS for supporting their learning and training activities.

In my presentation I've tried to show the variety and possibilites of ILIAS in three good practices. One of the earliest ILIAS users in public administration is the Bundesakademie für öffentliche Verwaltung - BAköV (federal academy of public administration). They belong to the minstry of internal affairs and are responsible for the teaching and training activities of their ministry and other departments. ILIAS at BAköV is used as the central repository for all e-learning-based activities. They are offering a lot of self-training modules which can be used any time any place. And due to their ILIAS knowhow and big server capacities, they are also offering hosting for other federal institutions and departments, e.g. Bundesrechnungshof.

The second example was a very different scenario. I explained how the Bundesverwaltungsamt is using the test system of ILIAS in their intranet to run applicant selection for eleven different vocational trainings. The former paper-pencil-tests have been transformed to online assessments with a duration of 70 minutes. Multiple-choice, gap text and drag&drop are mixed with open answers which need to be graded manually in relation 3 to 1. But even with these text answers, the time to correct a test has been reduced from 90 to 20 minutes! And the variety of test questions has considerably increased. And - very important - the test candidates prefer the online test and feel much more comfortable with it!

The last example I presented in Berlin is maybe the most extended of the three scenarios. I showed what the Technische Hilfswerk (THW) has built up in the last years. ILIAS at THW is not only used to offer learning material and documentation but to run blended learning courses as well as supporting collaboration and cooperation within the different  THW working groups and task forces. E-learning courses are often combined with a virtual classroom which can be connected easily to an ILIAS course. Because THW is mainly based on the work of volunteers, a time and place independent training is raising the acceptance of these people to continue their engagement for THW. Instead of spending their weekends in a THW school somewhere in Germany, the volunteers can now often stay at home and do required training activities in ILIAS and the virtual classroom.