1.

Executive Summary

During the last six decades we lived with the growing availability of technology: It’s
increasingly cheaper and more powerful in terms of computation [1]. In parallel, the internet based
communication brought humanity to a new reality, way beyond mere digital inclusion, where even
the Digital Life[2] is not scientific fiction anymore, but embraced as part of the fourth generation of
human rights[3]. Once being that far into the so-called Digital Era [4], we would like to address a few
aspects of Education limited to the modi operandi adopted by students at NTNU: How we learn -
And what can (or should) be improved.
It was notorious that, because of the recent COVID 19 pandemics, more than ever before, all
the processes should have been digital in order to minimize human close contact, thus hindering the
fast spreading of the virus, an effect that could be observed with the support of the mobile
technology[5]. Fortunately, several NTNU services were already available through mobile apps or
websites since before the pandemics, by increasingly turning into digital, which made the academic
community’s life easier already.
While during the pandemics the on-line services made the remote enough to ensure the main
sanitary counter-measure, after it we knew how to name other two traits:
● Asynchronous – People perform their tasks in their own time when there is no need
to execute tasks at the same time. Ex: to watch a recorded class 2 days after it
happened, add part of a group assignment, etc.
● Autonomous – One can handle stuff by itself. Ex: To enroll in a course, to upload a
requested documentation, etc.
Lessons learned, we, as an institution, acknowledge the perks of the digital era and want to
define more suitable processes in face of it. From the student perspective, we would like to propose
alternatives to three major flaws in the learning process:
1. Grufalo: A platform for group formation & instant messaging that provides a standard
way of forming groups and communicating. It comes in replacement of forms, questionnaires and
the several groups scattered among different instant messaging services (ex: Slack, Discord).
2. Smart Forum Q&A: Annotating documentation (ex: course syllabus, assignment
definition) with Q&A threads. It means to immediately augment raw information with precise
interpretation, just like codes in a Merge Request review process, so to share a common
understanding instead of segmenting or limiting the discussion to smaller attendances.
3. Via Scentiae: A streaming service of lectures. The classes are recorded. Ultimately,
classes are media, mainly videos, but possibly audios, for which we have the solution in place: On
demand streaming. If we leverage the main features of any streaming service (categorization,
subtitles, localization, bias algorithm, related content, play lists, favorites, etc), we could easily
distribute learning material among different institutions and countries.

We envision an NTNU that fosters students to study both individually and in groups from
whatever and whenever they are, including the many campi, with less competition for resources. At
the same time, every single content (documentations, instructions, guidelines, syllabus, bookmarks)
evolves to become more accurate (objectives to achieve), far-reaching (languages) and clear
(semantic) in a non-stopping, everlasting fashion.

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/technological-change
[2] Risse, Mathias. "The Fourth Generation of Human Rights: Epistemic Rights in Digital Lifeworlds" Moral Philosophy and Politics, vol. 8, no. 2,
2021, pp. 351-378. https://doi.org/10.1515/mopp-2020-0039
[3] Song, Lijue and Ma, Changshan. "Identifying the fourth generation of human rights in digital era" International Journal of Legal Discourse, vol.
7, no. 1, 2022, pp. 83-111. https://doi.org/10.1515/ijld-2022-2065
[4] Doukidis, Georgios; Mylonopoulos, Nikolaos; Pouloudi, Nancy - Social and Economic Transformation in the Digital Era. Chapter I - Why the
Digital Era? pages 1 - 18. July, 2003. ISBN13: 9781591401582|ISBN10: 1591401585|EISBN13: 9781591401599.
[5] Khataee, H., Scheuring, I., Czirok, A. et al. Effects of social distancing on the spreading of COVID-19 inferred from mobile phone data. Sci Rep
11, 1661 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-81308-2