This university located in a small city in the Netherlands counts with more or less 25000 students. The pilot was target for a group of 21 PhD students. From this sample of students (with ages between 26-40 years old) some engaged with the TRAILER tool and only 14 were considered active users, showing 81% of actions performed in the 2 platforms. This participation was developed in the Center for Learning Sciences and Technologies PhD programs in the field of Education and Computer Science.

As for the tool usage, they recorded a value of the average number of competences added per informal learning activity (ILA) below average (comparing with the other educational cases). However they presented the higher number of days of usage and actions per day. As far as publishing their activities the number is also low, following the pattern of the other cases.

They showed a fair prior recognition of IL: participants agreed they learned a lot from diverse natures and they debated about what could really be considered informal learning (IL). Their perception and awareness of IL increased for some but for others did not changed through the pilot activities. However this participation allowed them to reflect on their activities by documenting IL in a more structured way. Even though they considered that they had other means of sharing their competences with their supervisor, and so they do not see much use on having a tool like this.

They also shared deeper concerns about the use the teacher or employer could make of it: it might be useful for a supervisor, but only when clear definitions and agreements were made about competences to develop and use of the tool. Even so they also identified some advantages and possible benefits in working with a tool like this, such as being able to show other team members what learning activities one has done, observing the match between institutions and students or employees’ competences and interests that could be used that to make decisions.

In practice, participants considered that IL activities were considered FORMAL when they contributed to competences needed to their PhD and where specially concerned the validation of these IL learning activities (which was not an issue in TRAILER project). This undermined their perception of the TRAILER idea. Nevertheless these students (perhaps because they were PhD students), were very alert and critic about specific issues in the tool, which allowed to identify important drawbacks and aspects that needed revision. They also suggested a mobile client would have been much easier, as it would allow for learning activities to be recorded at the moment they occurred.

This university located in a big city in Poland counts with more or less 40000 students. The pilot was developed with a group of 13 third year students. From this universe, a sample of 15 students (with ages between 18-40 years old) engaged with the TRAILER tool and only 7 were considered active users, showing 61% of actions performed in the 2 platforms. In the educational context, this participation was the one that recorded a higher value of the average number of competences added per informal learning activity (ILA), even though inferior to the generality of professional contexts cases. They also presented a high number of users competences, even though none of them was validated in the second pilot. However in terms of published activities, the number is also low, following the pattern of the other cases.

They presented a fair prior recognition of informal learning (IL), which greatly improved with the work developed in this pilot. They scored the most important activity that potentially develops their IL as being “Conversations”. In general, comparing with other cases, they show the higher level of agreement relatively to the need for IL activities in “being better prepared to find a job” and “developing a deeper knowledge”.

They stressed that one of the advantages of this idea was being able to share their IL with others. As they see it: at the university this tool could be very valuable for students who are studying at different specializations so they could share their own resources with others on Portfolio; in big corporations where people are quite anonymous, for creating the project teams, sharing knowledge and IL resources and managing the competences within company; ultimately it could be used to search for people with similar competences and use their links for enriching our IL resources. Some also point out that this was a nice tool for creating showcases, which may be helpful when looking for the job since nowadays employers are paying more attention to the candidate’ IL competences.

There were several usability issues reported related to operational procedures and they stressed that the tool should be less time consuming and more intuitive. They would also suggest it could work on android and smartphones, in order to expand the usage of the tool more widely.

The person contacted to participate in the second pilot was the head of the Department of Entrepreneurship and Management. He agreed that the educational and business environment was becoming more aware of the importance of IL. Also that this tool represented a good way of keeping IL outcomes alive, available, visible and updated. He also shared that he believed that it could play the role of the bridge between the educational environment and business sector requirements and expectations.

This engineering higher school located in a big city of Spain counts with more than 40000 students. The pilot was developed in the Department of System Engineering and Informatics Systems at Informatics degree with a group of 20 third year students. All these students (with ages between 18-25 years old) engaged with the TRAILER tool and 18 were considered active users, showing 82% of the actions performed in the 2 platforms. Their participation was above average in the number of competences added per informal learning activity (ILA). However they did not publish many activities even though in terms of publishing user competences, they published all.

They presented a good prior recognition (even though some doubts about what could really be considered IL activities had aroused) of informal learning (IL), which did not change significantly with the work developed in this pilot. They scored the most important activity that potentially develops their IL, as being “Searching in the Internet”. In general, comparing with other cases, they show the higher level of agreement relatively to the need for IL activities in “understanding something” and “developing deeper knowledge”.

They regarded IL almost as important as formal, and in some cases even more important and they shared the thought that the University did not value IL nearly as much as it should. They liked the idea of such a platform and think it could be useful for having better employment options, helping them realize the quantity of ILAs they actually carried out.

In terms of the tool usability they pointed some issues that in their opinion should be improved, such as having a limited choices in activity type, the distinction between the Comments and Contents field not being clear, no need for defining a competence several times (for each activity). They did not understand the need of having 2 different tools (which had created some authentication issues).

The Professor involved in the second pilot (institutions’ perspective) also thought that in University IL was often considered with small consequence and this tool could improve the awareness of its importance and help promote IL in the eyes of the professors.

In general, they were favorable to the idea but not in using it regularly in its current state.

This university located in a big city of Spain counts with more than 250000 students. The pilot was developed in the Faculty of Education with a group of 74 third year students. From this universe, a sample of 15 students (with ages between 18-25 years old) engaged with the TRAILER tool and only 12 were considered active users, showing 49% of actions performed in the 2 platforms. However the participation was low in the average number of competences added per informal learning activity (ILA). In terms of published activities, even though the number is low, it was the case that presented the highest value, as was the number of users competences defined.

They presented a good prior recognition of informal learning (IL), which improved with the work developed in this pilot. They scored almost every option of important activities that potentially develop their IL, mentioning: “Trial and error”, “Conversations” and “Online tutorials” as the highest. In general, comparing with other cases, they show the higher level of agreement relatively to the need for IL activities in “being better prepared to find a job”.

They stressed that one of the advantages of this idea was being able to record knowledge’s, experiences and skills that would otherwise be forgotten and then describe and organize them. They said teachers could see students’ interest on particular activities and competencies areas and modify or improve curricula or didactical planning accordingly.

Even though they had identified some usability issues regarding the platforms (they saw no need for 2 platforms, long list of competences and the limited type of activity choices) they think that if well used by students and teachers, it could facilitate relationships between them and the institution. They also suggest to improve the mobile interface and to create easy interfaces in order to quickly write down all kind of IL evidences.

This was in agreement of what the Professor and Director of the University Institute of Educational Sciences thought, suggesting that it could contribute to a supplement diploma integrating skills beyond the official curricula.

This higher school located in a big city of Portugal represents one of the public schools of engineering in Portugal and counts with more than 6000 students. The pilot focused on a course at Automobile Mechanics degree, involving 30 first year students. From this universe, a sample of 14 students (with ages between 18-25 years old) engaged with the TRAILER tool and was considered active user, showing 52% of actions performed in the 2 platforms.  However the students’ participation was very low. The had a low average of competences added per informal learning activity (ILA), as in defining users competences: no one defined new competences, because as they stated, the general list of competences was so rich that they did not saw the need to add new ones. In terms of published activities, merely half of them were made public. This low usage issues might be related with the fact that the majority of students were freshman and therefore were not familiar with this kind of extra activities, not giving them great value. In fact the students who ended participating the most were some second year students, who were also enrolled in that course.

Initially they presented a fair recognition of informal learning (IL), which improved with the work developed in this pilot. The most important activities mentioned were: “Reading” and “Trial and error”. In general, comparing with other cases, they show the higher level of agreement relatively to the need for IL activities in “developing deeper knowledge”.

They stressed that one of the advantages of this idea was being able to make their IL visible to others, which would become useful to present along with their CV. They also identified some benefits in their academic life: in classes (in helping the teacher make more informed choices – namely defining students groups or managing course content), to course directors in managing and redirect job offers or to choose students to specific traineeships.

However the teacher in charge of this course, even though agreeing with these advantages, was much more reserved concerning their actual feasibility in traditional higher teaching in general. He argued that teachers cannot change the teaching model and it is not easy to perform different curricula for their students. However he considers that the tool might be worthwhile for students, yet they must first realize their IL as valid and useful.

Even though some usability issues were identified, some students considered the tool to be very useful and would like it to be available so they could use it on a regularly basis.

This small technology-based company located in a big city in Poland, specialized in Training – Consulting and Management had its core business administration, professional trainers and informatics. From the 13 employees, 10 were part of the learner perspective piloting trial phase of TRAILER. Typically the employees had a degree or a MSc and their age was between 26 and 40 years old. The majority had a very good prior recognition of IL, which was reinforced after the pilots. The most important activities mentioned were “Watching other people”, “Conversations” and the lower and particularly low in “Online tutorials”. In general, comparing with other cases, they show the higher level of agreement relatively to the need for IL activities in: “learn to perform particular tasks” and “developing a deeper knowledge”.

During the first piloting – the learner perspective phase, employees showed a fair percentage of active users (67%), but few competences (below average) were added per informal learning activities (ILA’s).  81% of actions were completed on both platforms (an average of 3 ILA’s per user). Regarding the phase of sharing their IL activities and competences, their results were also very low: the majority of the collected activities were not made public and only 50% of users’ competences and 25% of ILA’s associated competences were published.

The lowest score on usability issues of the tool was found for this group which area of business was not so much related with IT, even though they did considered it professionally useful in order to “collect IL in intuitive way and provide the team with the appropriate competences”. The major reported problems on usability were the limited type of activities possible to add in the collector, problems in sending those activities to the portfolio, the too extensive catalogue of competences and transparency issues regarding the use of competences definitions, which might be named differently (use of different words) by different users. As they alert, this problem with synonymous competences might generate difficulties or even biases, if not properly taken cared when employers use this data.

The CEO of this company was well aware of IL’s importance in recognizing, organizing, monitoring and validating informal processes, which could be used in several processes such as recruitment, promotion or motivation.

In the overall, this company considered that the high value of this TRAILER idea was in the promotion of collecting activities and be able to share it. This group is one of the cases that refer that an interface to work on smartphones or androids should be developed, and that it could be helpful to human resources management.

This small technology-based company located in a big city of Spain specialized in engineering-IT Specialists has its core business in areas like e-commerce, communication and the organization of corporate events and activities. All the 10 employees were part of the piloting trial phase of TRAILER. Typically the employees had a high school education or a degree and their age was between 26 and 40 years old.

Typically they had a fair prior perception of informal learning (IL), improved after the pilots, and higher importance was given to “Reading”, “Online tutorials” and “Searching in the Internet”. In general, comparing with other cases, they show the higher level of agreement relatively to the need for IL activities in “learn to perform particular tasks”, although the goal of “amusing myself” also had one of the highest scores found, particularly after the pilots.

During the first piloting – the learner perspective phase, employees showed a fair percentage of active users (80%), with 61% of actions completed in both platforms (an average of 5 informal learning activities (ILA’s) per user. An average number of competences were added per ILA of 2.4, but a low number of activities per day was reported (1). However, the great majority of the collected activities were not made public; only 50% of users’ competences and 25% of ILA’s associated competences were published.

This fact reduced the work that could have been accomplished in the second pilot – the employer perspective, since the company CEO could only act upon the published competences. As his employees, the CEO thinks this tool has great advantages in allowing the collection and organization of individual and company’s IL. This could clearly lead to benefits while managing competences in an institution. In fact, the company CEO stated that he always tried to put value in their employees’ IL and this tool allowed him to get a better idea of their employees’ competences and interests. He thought the tool was intuitive to navigate and was generally well organized.

In overall, they thought TRAILER tool’s usability was good, but could benefit from some improvements, such as management of long lists (to avoid excessive scroll), integration of the two platforms, simplifying the definitions required and enlarge the possibilities of activity type’s. After some of these improvements, they were willing to use this tool in the future in their daily business.