Overviewathena
Athena is an e-Learning solution that enables a Telco to offer multimedia rich, interactive courses and tutorials to customers. Athena is available in two flavors – “Athena Portal”, a Telco operated portal for delivering a variety of courses in partnership with third party content providers and “Athena Virtualized Learning Management System (VLMS)”, a virtualized solution for offering virtual private LMS for organizations.
Virtual learning experience
Learning need not be restricted to physical classrooms or books, when information availability is a click away. The Athena solution enables content developersto generate lessons that are highly interactive and rich in multimedia content thus engaging the student in a majestic journey towards learning.
Conforming to the industry standard SCORM, Athena can host interactive content developed using Macromedia FlashTM or HTML5 as well as embedded audio / video segments. Virtual learning doesn’t necessarily have to occur in isolation either. By combining e-Learning with traditional classroom based learning, a hybrid approach can be adopted, thereby reducing barrier to entry.
How it works
Athena runs on top of the thinkCube platform and is available in two versions, Athena Portal and Athena VLMS. The Athena Portal runs as a Telco operated service where users can register via multiple avenues such as SMS, USSD, IVR, WAP or web portal. Athena portal will integrate with the Telco’s backend to provide tight integration to the network infrastructure and customer database.
Athena VLMS is used to offer organizations with their own virtualized LMS
environment by making use of the thinkCube platform’s Multi-tenant capabilities. Each tenant will be allocated a unique URL which can be used to access their private VLMS instance. This URL can be registered under the Telco’s subdomain (e.g: abc.telco.com) or point to an existing domain.
Hybrid Learning
One of the key concepts promoted by Athena is hybrid learning where the traditional classroom based learning is augmented with e-learning. For instance lecture notes can be downloaded and assignments can be submitted through the LMS. In the classroom the teacher can conduct a spot quiz to obtain instant feedback on comprehension of the lesson. Through Athena’s multimedia features, a teacher can make lectures available for those students who were unable to attend classes or need to refer to a lesson at a later time. Athena embodies many features that assist teachers to employ a hybrid approach to teaching thus reducing the barrier to adoption of e-learning.
Virtual presence
Students who are unable to attend classes in person due to proximity caused travel issues, could make use of the virtual classroom capabilities of Athena to virtually attend. Using the real-time classroom feature, students can listen to the lecture with video support and can make use of features such as raise
hand (to ask questions). Using the chat feature, students can virtually attend study sessions and even get scheduled time with the lecturer, without having to sacrifice precious study time for commuting.
Insourced Training
Why should organizations have to outsource corporate training when they can conduct it in-house using Athena VLMS? By virtualizing Athena, each organization can have their own “training center in-the-cloud”. Whether it’s for conducting an orientation program for a new employee or to conduct training on using the latest office package, the corporates will be able to develop content or purchase off the shelf training courses and have it added to their VLMS. Corporates will appreciate the security sandbox features of Athena that is inherited from the thinkCube platform.
Fully themable
In delivering a course the ambiance is as important as the content in it. By having flexible theming capabilities, Athena enables a content provider to
deliver the content in an intimate environment that is conducive to learning.
EduStore
Athena EduStore is a thinkCube operated virtual clearing house for telcos to pick and choose the best content for their e-Learning portal. EduStore contains a rich collection of educational content submitted by registered content providers. Content submitted to EduStore is added only after a carefully selected approval process consisting of educational experts has concluded. EduStore is exclusively available to our Telco partners to browse and select for inclusion in their Athena portal. Revenue share to content providers is cleared by the EduStore giving content owners a smooth transactional visibility.
Built-in CMS
Athena has built-in content management & editing features which makes it easy for anyone with editing privileges to modify pages within the system including menu entries. Corporates can use Athena as the foundation for building their intranet portal, where the primary focus is on educating employees in addition to having standard information.
Stay informed
Operating an LMS portal can only be successful if there is a proper feedback loop as to which mix of courses, content providers and packages matter and
which ones needs improvement. Athena captures usage statistics and presents them in a fashion that enables the Telco to be better informed in order to
proactively take decisions for improvement. For instance the Telco could see which packages are popular among a certain age group or how the popularity of a given content provider has changed over time.
Telco-friendly packaging options
Athena provides a multitude of packaging options for segregating users, courses and content providers to provide maximum flexibility to Telcos wanting to offer e-Learning. For instance, a Telco can create a set of user groups that map directly to an existing loyalty program to offer special discounts. Content providers may be grouped so that any course or lesson followed by them will be entitled to special discounts. Students can be enticed into enrollment by offering trial periods or “buy-1-get-1″ type offers. Telcos can even package based on delivery channels such as IVR/IVVR, WAP, SMS and other means.
VLMS for Organizations
Athena VLMS allocates each corporate customer a unique URL under the telco’s own domain (e.g: abc.telco.com) reserved for the service. Customers can access their VLMS instance by visiting their custom URL. Upon logging in, customers can upload training material such as documents, presentations, audio / video clips or create interactive content. Under the hood, each customer’s application processes and data including databases and personal files will be securely partitioned and sandboxed from that of another.
Athena Portal
Athena portal enables a Telco to operate an e-Learning portal as a “one-stop-shop” destination for users to find courses to enroll into. The portal provides telcos with the ability to partner with content providers to offer a variety of courses relevant to education, vocational training and career development.
Courses could be offered, pre-bundled with special promotional discounts, coupon codes as well as trial offers to promote the service.
Powered by the best
At the heart of Athena lies the thinkCube platform which provides telco grade scalability without compromising on security or flexibility. Athena is
powered by one of the most popular LMS – Moodle. Moodle powers majority of the LMSes across universities and schools. In order to build Athena, thinkCube has productized Moodle for a Telco environment by adding functionality required by the telcos.