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PROLIX is a 48 months research and development integrated project co-funded by the European Commission under the Sixth Framework Programme, Priority 2 “Information Society Technologies” started on 1st December 2005.
The objective of PROLIX is to align learning with business processes in order to enable organisations to faster improve the competencies of their employees according to continuous changes of business requirements.
To reach this goal, PROLIX develops an open, integrated reference architecture for process-oriented learning and information exchange.

PROLIX supports a complete learning process life cycle

1. the analysis of complex business situations;

2. the identification of individual and organisational learning goals;

3. the analysis of competencies and their matching with individual skills;

4. the definition of appropriate learning strategies and the simulation of competency-oriented processes;

5. the execution of improved learning processes;

6. the monitoring of learners’ performance according to the goals defined.

Vision
PROLIX vision is to make people and organisations more competitive by reducing the time to fill competency gaps and to build proficiency according to the business needs and daily work processes. The delay between identification of a learning need and the actual learning should not be large. Furthermore, the learning material must be targeted to the learner’s individual learning style and behaviour. In some cases, learning must also be ‘ad hoc’ available in order to improve the performance of the employee at his workplace significantly. Organisations need to understand that providing the necessary means to learning at the workplace is mandatory for employees and organisation alike to react quickly, cost – effective and successfully in nowadays ever-changing markets. PROLIX will therefore couple business processes with learning processes in corporate environments. The vision of PROLIX is a system that allows for business process driven learning at the workplace, taking into account the single learner and their needs as well as the corporate requirements. In addition, the learner will be able to initialize a learning task himself enabling self-guided learning in corporate environments.

Overall and seen from an organizational point of view, PROLIX will significantly contribute to the change management within companies that needs to develop into a holistic learning organization enabling the integration of learning into the daily working tasks. Corporate culture requires the provision of strategies, methods and concepts to satisfy heterogeneous learning needs. Mechanisms and concepts for the organizational introduction of TEL in corporations have to be co-ordinated with its philosophy and company vision.

Objectives
PROLIX will research, analyze and develop a process-oriented learning approach and a flexible and adaptive service-oriented architecture system which is capable of aligning training and knowledge product ion of people faced with so-called “complex situations” such as work and business process changes, or other complex multivariable learning environments, which cannot be solved with traditional eLearning or knowledge management approaches. Often, such situations also require a mix of individual and organisational learning, and of learning and knowledge acquisition/production.

PROLIX objectives are:

1. PROLIX aims to enable an organisation to close the learner’s life cycle
2. PROLIX aims to make it easier to define Learning Goals based on business needs and business processes
3. PROLIX aims to deliver a methodology for matching of needed competencies with “as-hoc” profiles
4. PROLIX aims to provide competence oriented process decision support through simulation
5. PROLIX aims to integrate Learning Technology Solutions with Business Information Systems
6. PROLIX aims to monitor Learner ’s Performance according to Business Needs
7. PROLIX aims to provide an Open Business Enterprise Learning and Information Systems exchange Reference Architecture (OBELIX)
8. PROLIX will develop a repository of Didactical Learning Models to enable the identification of Learning scenarios for process- oriented learning

Please click here for a detailed description of PROLIX objectives.

Test bed
In order to demonstrate its concept, PROLIX sets up three test beds in different fields of application. In the first 18-month period, PROLIX will specify, design, implement and start to demonstrate its tools and services in more mature eLearning-aware and, therefore, lower risk environments, i.e. the “Government test bed” with UK Government Care Programme (Social Care Institute for Excellence), the “Telecom test bed” with British Telecom (BT) learning, and the “Educational Publishing test bed” with publishing houses Klett and EDITIS.

The Red Sox will honor popular television analyst and former player Jerry Remy during tonight’s game at Fenway Park. The following press release excerpt from NESN runs down tonight’s pregame ceremonies:

NESN and the Boston Red Sox celebrate Jerry Remy Day today at Fenway Park. In recognition of his 20 years as NESN’s Red Sox analyst, Jerry will be honored in a special pre-game ceremony before tonight’s game against Arizona.

The on-field ceremony will be hosted by NESN’s play-by-play announcer Don Orsillo and carried live on NESN. Jerry will be joined on the field by members of his family, former teammates and coaches, Carlton Fisk, Dennis Eckersley, Rick Burleson, Dwight Evans, Walt Hriniak and Bob Stanley. Also present for the ceremony will be Red Sox chairman Tom Werner and former broadcast partners Bob Kurtz and Sean McDonough.

The ceremony consists of a series of videos highlighting Jerry’s career as an analyst, and a special gift presentation to Jerry by NESN president Sean McGrail. The ceremony will conclude with Jerry throwing out the ceremonial first pitch to Carlton Fisk.

In addition to the on-field ceremony, Mayor Tom Menino will visit Jerry in the broadcast booth during the game to proclaim June 24th as Jerry Remy Day in the city of Boston. NESN and NESN.com are also running congratulatory recorded messages from some celebrities who are Red Sox fans including Ben Affleck, Michael Chiklis, Lenny Clarke, Stephen King, Denis Leary, Conan O’Brien, Mike O’Malley, Matt Siegel and Jack Welch.

Cyd Charisse, a famous actress and dancer who can be see in such classic films as Singin’ in the Rain, has died. She was 86 years old and passed away after a heart attack in Los Angeles.

Born Tula Ellice Finklea, the Texas native studied classical ballet from a young age, touring with the legendary Ballets Russes starting at age 14. Later, having taken on the stage name Cyd Charisse (a combination of her childhood nickname and the surname of her first husband), she rose to fame dancing in MGM musicals opposite Fred Astaire (Ziegfeld Follies, The Band Wagon, Silk Stockings) and Gene Kelly (Singin’ in the Rain, Brigadoon, It’s Always Fair Weather). Though just 5 feet, 6 inches tall, Charisse became known for her long legs; the Guinness Book of World Records reportedly once listed her as having the world’s most valuable legs, due to a $5 million insurance policy taken out on them. As Astaire said, “She wasn’t a tap dancer, she’s just beautiful, trained, very strong in whatever we did. When we were dancing, we didn’t know what time it was.”

Charisse also forged a popular partnership with her second husband, singer Tony Martin, with whom she performed song-and-dance acts in nightclubs and on television. In later years, she appeared in exercise videos and on Broadway, where she debuted in 1992, at age 71, in the musical Grand Hotel. In 2006, she received the National Medal of Arts and Humanities, the highest U.S. honor afforded to people in the arts.