This publication has been produced during the project ”Ecological Economics in Prison Work Administration” - 2014-1-PT01-KA204-001070 (ECOPRIS) implemented with financial support of the European Commission by the Erasmus + programme. This publication reflects the views only of the author, and the ANPROALV and Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained herein.

ICT PRISON WORKS DEVELOPMENT

AND MANAGEMENT TOOL

Open source management application tool and a learning management

system platform

PROJECT

ECOPRIS – Ecological Economics in Prison Work Administration

PARTNERS

BSAFE LAB – Law Enforcement, Justice and Public Safety Research and Technology Transfer

Laboratory

bsafe.ubi.pt

Ceza ve Tevkifevleri Genel Müdürlüğü (CTGM) cte.adalet.gov.tr

CPIP - Centrul Pentru Promovarea Invatarii Permanente cpip.ro

Direção-Geral De Reinserção E Serviços Prisionais (DGRSP) dgsp.mj.pt

European Organisation of Prison and Correctional Services (EuroPris) europris.org

IPS_Innovative Prison Systems prisonsystems.eu

Penitenciarul Timișoara anp.gov.ro

Universitatea De Vest Din Timisoara (UVT) uvt.ro

AUTHORS

Alexandra Gomes | IPS

Pedro Neves | IPS

Susana Reis | IPS

Tiago Leitão | IPS

With the collaboration of:

Andreea Ionescu | UVT

Andreea Szasz | Timisoara Prison

Carlos Guímaro | DGRSP

Catalin Olaru | Timisoara Prison

Cengiz Birliq | CTGM

Ciprian Miza | Timisoara Prison

Cristina Busuioc | Timisoara Prison

Daiana Huber | CPIP

Delia Borza | Timisoara Prison

Ezgi Cetinturk | CTGM

Florin Lobont | UVT

Graça Esgalhado | BSAFE LAB

Henrique Pereira | BSAFE LAB

Horatiu David | Timisoara Prison

Jorge Monteiro | DGRSP

Julia Ilyina | EuroPris

Kamuran Tıbık | CTGM

Kirsten Hawlitschek | EuroPris

Nuno Garcia | BSAFE LAB

Radu Ciolacu | Timisoara Prison

Rodica Pana | CPIP

Rodica Popa | EuroPris

Samuel Monteiro | BSAFE LAB

Suleyman Kacmaz | CTGM

Teresa Silva | DGRSP

Virginie Felizardo | BSAFE LAB

Vítor Costa | BSAFE LAB

PUBLICATION DATE

July 2017

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Contents

I. INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................................................... 4

II. WORK METHODOLOGY ............................................................................................................................. 6

1. NEEDS AND REQUIREMENTS BLUEPRINT (O4-A1) ................................................................................................. 6

2. PRISON WORK DEVELOPMENT AND MANAGEMENT SYSTEM PROTOTYPE DEVELOPMENT (O4-A2) ............................... 6

3. ICT TOOLS DEPLOYMENT (O4-A3) ...................................................................................................................... 7

III. LEARNING ENVIRONMENT REQUIREMENTS BLUEPRINT ................................................................. 8

1. THE LIST OF FUNCTIONALITIES AVAILABLE FOR USERS ............................................................................................ 9

IV. INTELLECTUAL OUTPUT TARGETED USERS AND BENEFICIARIES................................................. 11

V. ACCESS TO THE LMS ................................................................................................................................ 11

VI. CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS .......................................................................................... 12

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I. Introduction Table 1 – ECOPRIS Project Sheet

Promotor BSAFE Lab - University of Beira Interior (UBI), Portugal

Partners

IPS_Innovative Prison Systems (Qualify Just IT solutions and Consulting), Portugal

Center for Promoting Lifelong Learning (CPIP), Romania

Penitentiary of Timisoara (PTM), Romania

West University of Timisioara (UVT), Romania

General Directorate of Prisons and Detention Houses (CTEGM), Turkey

European Organisation of Prison and Correctional Services (EuroPris),

Netherlands

Start date 01-09-2014 End

date

31-08-2017 (36 months)

Action KA2 - Cooperation for Innovation and the Exchange of Good Practices: Strategic

Partnerships for Adult Education

Ecological Economics in Prison Work Administration (ECOPRIS) is a transnational

European project funded by the EU Commission under Erasmus+ Program’ Key Action 2 -

Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices: Strategic Partnerships for adult

education.

Gathering in its consortia Romanian, Portuguese, Turkish, EuroPris (representing Prison

Services across Europe) and, very recently Belgian partners, ECOPRIS project intends to

prepare prison staff to develop and manage “prison work”; to provide opportunities for

inmates’ skills development; and also to increase the generation of own funds to be allocated

to the fulfilment of prison’s mission.

ECOPRIS emphasizes transversal targeted skills: management, entrepreneurship, prison

work and industries awareness, ecology, marketing, communication, ICT, teamwork and

integrated reintegration, as core enablers to staff engagement in prison work sustainable

development.

The project’s specific objectives are to:

1) Create 1 conjoint course on prison work plans development to promote inmates

reintegration throughout prison work initiatives, by developing staff management

skills;

2) Train 36 prison staff, in 3 countries, in multidisciplinary teams of 6 members (2 per

country), with 3 short-term transnational training events, to develop and implement

innovative prison work actions engaging at least 20 inmates per country;

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3) Improve community and businesses participation in staff and inmates labour

reintegration actions by engaging key stakeholders and experts in national seminars,

validation workshops, transnational events and involvement in trainings' pilot actions.

ECOPRIS partnership is expected to develop eight Intellectual Outputs / tangible deliverables:

The project team started their work in November 2015 with the development of the fourth

output - “Prison Works Development and Management Tool” which is an open source

management application tool and a learning management system platform setup that supports

ECOPRIS developed training programs implementation, conjoint transnational training

activities and piloting actions (business plans implementation).

This is an open source IT tool capable of providing functionalities to accommodate the

different steps of an ECOPRIS training process with higher cost-efficiency and follows

learning’s resulting from pilots actions and three Short-term Joint Staf Training Events.

1 • Prison work models critical review - document comparing existent prison work models in

prison systems (national and international), with special focus on transversal targeted skills

2 • “Prison work” administration assessment tool - online prison staff self-assessment on

the competences addressed by the project

3 • Course Curriculum and Program - Conjoint development of new learning and teaching

curriculum

4 • ICT prison work development and management tool - configured open source

management application tool and a learning management system platform setup

5 • Conjoint course manual and guide - Joint development and implementation of new learning and teaching manual and guide

6 • Prison work business plans implementation manual - a manual on piloting prison work

creation in prisons with different countries specifications, under a “work based” approach

7 • Consulting and Coaching manual - a manual focused on coaching and consultancy sessions

experience provided in prison services, under a “work based” approach

8 • Prison work catalogue - The actions with best results and impact in prison works

implementation will be selected and presented in the catalogue

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II. Work Methodology In this section we share the path of developing the output. This information can be helpful to

introduce the reader on how we reach the final result and also can support future updates,

continuous improvement or even new outputs based on what was achieved.

1. Needs and requirements blueprint (O4-A1)

The work started with the development of the tool blueprint in which it was specified the

requirement for the ECOPRIS training. The blueprint included the definition of functionalities,

key access, security, project management and monitoring functions.

This initial work conducted to the identification, selection, configuration and deployment of 1

open source learning management system. The LMS configuration conducted to include the

below presented functionalities:

Learning path

Chat

Forum

Survey and exercises

Wiki

Groups organization (communities of practice)

Trainees individual reports

2. Prison work development and management system prototype

development (O4-A2)

With the conclusion of the needs and requirements blueprint it was possible to launch the

configuration and setup of the online learning environment that required the installation of the

tool on the QJ-IPS. Afterwards it was necessary to configure the ICT tool according to training

course specifications which was done in parallel with pilots organization. Partners did an

internal pre-test implying the creation of a brief guide to support actions related to create and

manage online training activities.

Finally training course information and contents (presentations, documents, surveys,

assignments, movies and other pedagogical resources) were uploaded, training courses

sessions and learning paths prepared and training groups organized, including users creation

and registration. During the pilots it was possible to monitor trainees activities and issue

reports about the use of these online learning environments.

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3. ICT tools deployment (O4-A3)

Once pilots were concluded there a review of the learning environment and final contents

were uploaded online, being available to be acceded to ECOPRIS users, but also to other prison

services interested in the ECOPRIS learning process.

The LMS is configured to provide different partner national languages and was tested both in

the national pilot actions as well as in translational ones. The fine-tuning of the ICT tool will be

ongoing as part of the sustainability strategy and everything is ready for forthcoming ECOPRIS

trainings.

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III. Learning environment requirements blueprint

This initial section includes the information about the process of identifying, selection of an

open source LMS and the list of functionalities that users can expect when using this solution.

The project team was search for a suitable tool in the web. When thinking of an Open Source

LMS/VLE, we often think immediately of Moodle (moodle.com). Moodle has been around since

2001 and now has an important community of followers and companies developing modules

for it.

Nonetheless this solution has been identified with a set

of constraints when using the open sources available

features and functionalities. That is, the amount of work

to configure and fully use Moodle to deliver all the basic

functionalities foreseen in ECOPRIS was identified as a

challenge. This conducted the team to search and

compare to other open source solutions, being one that

popped up amongst others the Chamilo (chamilo.org)

solution.

In terms of usability and integrated features, Chamilo

has a lot to offer which is not included in the basic

version of Moodle. Chamilo offers higher flexibility and

customisation and is one of the most performing

platforms on the LMS market.

The search and definition of the specification conducted

to the decision on using Chamilo for ECOPRIS purposes

since ensures:

• Easy creation of educational content

• Easy and free installation on web hosting

solutions

• Tracking of users results, allowing for

methodology improvements

• Clean interface, letting user focus on

learning

• Synchronous and asynchronous communication channels

• Many tools allowing for all learning types (visual, auditive, practical, serious

games, staff selection)

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• Extensive documents management capabilities

For sustainable reasons the solution is installed in IPS_Innovative Prison Services services,

being available at elearning/ecopris.

1. The list of functionalities available for users

The selected and configure platform have the following functionalities available for future

users and that were installed and are normally accessible in the open source tool.

• Courses and users management

• 9 pre-defined user profiles: students; tutors; teachers; coach; session coach; session

managers; HR director; portal administrator; global administrator

• 20 pedagogical tools: document management: upload, download, show, hide, organize,

search titles; assignments; tests; survey; wiki; forum: create forum categories, forums

and forum threads, search content; chat; agenda; announcements; pedagogical

description; links; documents sharing (dropbox); working groups; certificates/learning

objectives; glossary; user tracking; attendance; course progress

• Dynamic Certificates generation (through templates)

• Social learning network (including creation of interest groups)

• Standards implementations: SCORM 1.2; AICC; IMS/QTI; HotPotatoes; iCal; other

standards supported

• Training sessions/cycles management, with possible later access to courses in read-

only (allows graduates to get access to their previous courses)

• Tracking export for external statistics tools (Jasper reports, Excel, etc)

• Terms and conditions management

• Glossary terms can be enabled inside documents, exercises and learning paths

• Automatic alerts to the trainer on students' delivery of assignments or online tests

• Real-time limit for tests/exams

• Timezones management (for international organizations)

• Dashboard for the training manager

• Import of external results into scoring for delivery of certificates

• Shared calendar (with import/export from iCal format events)

• Defining additional fields for users profile

• Platform-wide announcements

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• Course catalog

• CSV/Excel data import/export

• Developer's API (Web Services): integrate with ERP, CRM, CMS and KM systems

• Compatible with HTTPS to secure the portal

• Security filters on file extensions

• WCAG/WAI accessibility standard support

• Internal messaging tool

• Online e-mail editor (replaces the necessity of a separate e-mail editor)

• Extensible through plugins

• Online users page

• Editable document templates (allowing for the use of a common branding in newly

created documents)

• Editable homepage and registration page

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IV. Intellectual Output Targeted Users and Beneficiaries This platform is intended for public and private (non or for profit) organizations enrolled in

prison work administration training courses. The main users are prison services, their training

departments, but also those partners providing training to prison staff currently working in

prisons and linked or initiating collaboration in prison work initiatives.

The beneficiaries are multidisplinary prison staff teams covering a wide range of categories,

functions and experience levels:

Top and middle management (board, legal counselling, economics, health

department, logistics, and operations)

Reintegration and education staff

Prison Guards

Teachers and trainers

Administrative and assistants

V. Access to the LMS

Any person can go the LMS through the link: www.prisonsystems.eu/elearning/ecopris. The

access is limited to those targeted in previous section IV. This restriction is solely to ensure

security and output sustainability reducing risks of platform compromise and avoidable

maintenance costs. The access must be validated by partner organizations and contact can be

found below. With the access the user also receive supporting user guides.

Penitenciarul Timisoara,

ROMÂNIA

http://anp.gov.ro/web/penitenciarul-timisoara

CEZA VE TEVKIFEVLERI GENEL MUDURLUGU

TURKEY

http://www.cte.adalet.gov.tr/

Centrul pentru Promovarea Învățării

Permanente

ROMÂNIA

http://cpip.ro/

IPS_Innovative Prison Systems

PORTUGAL

http://www.prisonsystems.eu/

contact person: Tiago Leitao

email: tiago.leitao@prisonsystems.eu

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VI. Conclusion and recommendations

In this section we present some project pilot feedback and list a set of recommendations to

enable a successful usage of ECOPRIS platform in the future. This tool was applied several

times during the project and already provided positive and stimulating results. Some problems

and restriction on the usage of these platforms resulted in some limitations during piloting

actions, especially in some countries. Nonetheless the implemented piloting sustain with no

doubt that LMS are of major importance to support staff training.

The tool presents a customized

template with easy access. Any

participant can access the tool 24

hours per day, 7 days per week,

which allows fully personalised

training hours.

The open source tool is available to

be utilised by training managers

and their teams to control and

manage training groups.

The tool is already configured with

main features and functionalities

having a modern and appealing

design. The biggest setbacks are the

difficulty to access the tool on

working hours and also the

difficulty to engage working groups.

It is of outmost importance to

provide training to trainees prior to the training deployment. In ECOPRIS this was attempted

and achieved better results, even if it can be largely improved.

The present tool makes the learning path more fluid and interactive. The training pilots

applied the present tool with good indicators even if they must be improved in long term. All

participants considered being of great help the use of the platform.

The users and partners confirmed that the Learning Management Systems is aligned with most

of new learning trends, namely:

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• It supports contextualised learning since it is possible to exchange with participants

and it asks for local case studies and to perform learning tasks based on local

challenges.

• The data is better used and it is always available enabling a more consistent learning

process.

• The learning process is a conjoint and social one through the e-learning platform

support.

• The learning is not only about performances, but mostly about learning experiences

ensuring the necessary internalisation of knowledge and the capacity to apply in

different working contexts.

In terms of quality indicators please see the table below:

Parameters Feedback in different tests

Access to the Learning management System

Did you experience any difficulty accessing the tool?

Few participants required support.

Were you able to log in without any trouble?

Few participants required support.

Navigation in the Learning management System

Is the tool intuitive and easy to understand?

The guide help, but it is needed to provide some class or online

session.

Management of Learning management System

Did you experience any difficulty?

The training managers and trainers didn’t report any difficulty

Communicate with learners? The training managers and trainers

didn’t report any difficulty

Learning management System usefulness Useful in terms of accessing course information and preparation.

Tool´s flexibility and transferability

Flexible and transferable to different prisons and countries. Problem of compatibility with internal prison services IT systems.

Usage barriers/limitations Maybe to some disabilities and access in the working hours – compatibility with IT systems.

Adaptability to prison context and to different learning domains It can be adaptable to prison context or other learning domains.

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Parameters Feedback in different tests

Instructions clarity Instructions on how to use and perform the training task are clear.

Accessibility and reliability No problem in accessibility. No doubt about reliability of the

results.

End-users acceptance and adoption willingness Acceptance and adoption willingness of end users will be high,