Article Preview
TopIntroduction
Information and communication technologies, digital technologies and use of Internet significantly influence the supply as well as the behavior of consumers in varying realms of life.
For an Internet based service to be successful it is important not only that the place of access (WEB portal) has a design appealing to the visitor but also that it offers functional, reliable, well-structured, and rich in content and accurate information.
An important potential advantage of WEB based learning lies with its provision of interactivity (Evans & Sabry, 2003).
One of the IMPROHEALTH Collaborative project’s objective was to fine-tune the already functional and existing www.improhealth.org Virtual Healthcare Quality Center (VHCQC) portal (Figure 1) so that the above specified requirements would be met based on cooperative collaboration of developmental personnel and the potential users.
Figure 1. Original IMPROHEALTH VHCQC portal (2002 - 2006)
After a successful finalization of the pilot project KEGA 009/TnUAD/2011 titled ‘Vocational Education and Training for Quality of Life through e-Healthcare & Well-Being’ in 2008 the IMPROHEALTH portal is continuously providing its services and is constantly being developed. The trade mark IMPROHEALTH® has been internationally registered. Two selected educational modules (M2: Healthcare Organization Quality Management and M7: e-Health: Systems Organization and Management) started offering WEB based learning with integrated e-Learning encompassing remote healthcare laboratories and measurements supported by ongoing projects KEGA 009/TUKE/2011 ‘Creative laboratory training at technical faculties’ (CRELABTE).
Objectives of this paper are presented in four comprehensive sections providing comprehensive background knowledge and information:
- •
Selection of appropriate content management software;
- •
Kansei Engineering and collaborative development of the existent IMPROHEALTH® portal’s quality functions;
- •
Description of content, structure, functions and services offered by the innovated IMPROHEALTH® portal;
- •
Future development;
- •
Final summarization of the presented information.
TopSelection Of Cms Software
When deciding about the selection of Content Management Software (CMS) one is faced by the option of choosing from two types of products. The first one is represented by commercial applications supplied by companies and available to the user after payment. The other type is formed by applications distributed by developers and companies to the user for free (hence, ‘Freeware’).
Since we need to select a CMS suitable for a variety of services offered, including educational services, we needed to opt also for a Learning Content Management System (LCMS), and then to appropriately interconnect the two. As the project plan never considered purchasing software our decision to opt for a freeware-based solution as an a priori matter.
When deciding on CMS we selected and used (CMS Matrix, 2011) and post entering our requirements in the following categories: security, simplicity of use, performance, built-in applications, support, flexibility, management, inter-operability, and commerce, we settled on TYPO 3 software.
When selecting LCMS we based our choice on results of both our own surveys and that of (Dillingerová, 2008). Since all project participating countries already were using localized versions of LCMS Moodle software, we agreed on using this tool also for our project.