La sperimentazione del Knowledge Hub

[Autom. eng. transl.] Problems due to physical or health disabilities, congenital or acquired as a result of trauma or degenerative diseases, often temporarily or permanently prevent normal participation in school, university and professional education. In these cases, can network and mobile technologies offer new opportunities for real socio-educational inclusion? This is the key issue that from 2009 to 2012 led the research and development of the project called WISE (Wiring Individualized Special Education), funded by the Ministry of Education, University and Research with investment funds for basic research ( FIRB). The aim of the project was the development of a support system for the education and special training of the so-called homebound, ie those who for physical and health reasons are confined to their home or other environment (hospital, temporary domicile). Essential parts of the WISE support system are the tools for sharing knowledge and good practices on homebound special education, the assisted planning of educational interventions aimed at special users, the training of socio-educational operators. Is the Knowledge Hub (KH) an environment capable of fostering rich, personalized, and dynamic research on resources relating to the field of special needs in education? In order to obtain an exhaustive answer to the research question, an experimentation activity was conducted that allowed the researchers to trace confirmatory data with respect to the main objectives of the research, thus triggering an improvement process based on the empirical data collected. The work presents the methods of management, the tools used and the data obtained from a functional evaluation and usability perspective. The emerging constructs, corroborated by the data obtained from the discussion session, allowed the researchers to identify evidence capable of validating or not the starting hypotheses with respect to the value of the specific functionalities of the KH and the general innovative scope of the tool in the target context.