Welcoming BBoard, Bocconi's New E Learning Platform

A few weeks ago, two large "speaking" packages appeared on campus, piquing the interest of the Bocconi community. On 15 February, with an inaugural ceremony, students opened the mysterious packages and found a depiction of the university's new e-learning platform. They were then asked to christen it with a name chosen through a vote. "BBoard was the name chosen for the new platform that, starting today, will support teaching activities at the University," says Leonardo Caporarello, faculty member and director of BETA (Bocconi Education & Teaching Alliance), the center created to discuss and design the future of learning at the University. Along with several faculty members, the ICT department and the Academic Affairs Division, it is supporting the process of adopting the new e-learning system.

"It's actually more than a project," explains Caporarello. "It's the first step in the digital evolution that Bocconi is undertaking." On one hand, the new platform aims to consolidate existing teaching methodologies, while on the other, it aims to introduce several changes. BBoard is a real virtual teaching environment that provides various tools. These include online assessments, which allow faculty members to change teaching material in real time and students to understand if they have dedicated enough time to studying a topic. Homework and exercises can be completed and corrected directly on the platform. In addition, work groups and discussion blogs can be managed, as well as videoconferences. "This is just about the platform's interactive features," continues the Director of BETA. "But BBoard also allows multimedia content to be integrated into the platform, including images, audio and video." A good example of this is the first multimedia case history students discussed in class last month. It was all made easily accessible because the platform can be used from smartphones and tablets through an app, which will be released soon.

"The thing that has guaranteed and will guarantee this change is integration, not only in terms of technology but also in terms of people," says Caporarello. "The entire Bocconi community has participated in the project: staff, faculty and students." More than 300 names for the platform were proposed, then students voted on the 5 finalists, ultimately choosing BBoard. But student participation was not limited to choosing the name: students from Radio Bocconi were the voices of the two boxes, to incite the curiosity of students passing by. "It was exciting and really funny for us to play the voice of innovation," says Sara Imbeni, who studies Economics and Management for Art, Culture and Communication. "We were in a room not far away and we could see everything through a GoPro placed on top of the boxes. That way, if we recognized any of our classmates, we could try to get their attention and make them come closer by calling their names. It was an experience that I would love to do again."