Chiara Succi is a good friend of mine that I met while she was interning at the Masie Center. Chiara is also a Ph.D candidate at the University of Lugano in Lugano, Switzerland. She is pursuing a doctorate in Communication Sciences at the newMinE Lab (New Media in Education Lab) and her prof's blog is here. She is focusing on e-learning and needs some help with her research.

I am including an abstract of her research below but the upshot is that she needs some folks to take surveys. I have taken the survey myself and can attest to the fact that it is relatively painless and brief. The abstract is below but if I've already convinced you to help, the survey is here. C'mon - it'll just take a minute and you'll be blessed with good karma next time you are out looking for data.

Research Abstract: ELearning Acceptance within Organizations: the Role of Communication

In this research we would like to understand the importance of the context surrounding eLearning

experiences. In particular one element of the context seems to be functional to this purpose and worth of studying: the communication issue.The aim of the study is to identify a Readiness Index that has to be taken into consideration by eLearning managers when they create and communicate eLearning activities. In order to do this we identified four categories of variables playing an important role in the preparation phase: before launching/releasing an eLearning activity.

1. Commitment to the eLearning activity: motivation of eLearners and goals of the proposed

activities;

2. Knowledge of the eLearning activity: technical and cognitive skills and knowledge of tools in

use;

3. Commitment of the organizational framework: internal sponsorship and involvement of the

management;

4. Knowledge of the organizational framework: incentive systems and policies aimed to

facilitate eLearning activities (space and time).

We intend to identify:

\* the presence (if companies do or do not ) of 17 activities fitting in the above listed

macro-areas;

\* their importance in the opinion of learning managers;

\* the role of communication.