Novel Client Representations for the Collaborative Virtual Learning Environment sTeam
Ralf Bilger, Bernd Eßmann, Christian Enklaar, Christoph Grote, Karsten Nebe, Alexander Schlicht, Christoph Schmidt, Ludger Merkens, Thomas Bopp, Thorsten Hampel, Henrik Beige · EdMedia: World Conference on Educational Media and Technology · 2001
The Paderborn Open Source Project sTeam (Information Structuring in a Team) currently develops a net based environment to assist cooperative learning in virtual communities. The following paper describes the activities of a group of students involved in the project at the University of Paderborn, who researches various approaches for presenting information, interaction and communication structures in a virtual learning environment. A prototypic implementation of a twoand three-dimensional client for the sTeam system does create new ways of interaction between learners and the learning materials in a virtual space. Introduction Learning is a socially embedded design process. But most of today's hypermedia systems fail to properly support both the design-related and the social aspects of learning. Authoring and web-publishing systems aim to support the authors' design process. Consequently, learners' activities are confined to selecting and reading. Based on some fundamental reflections on the role of technology in learning processes, we conclude that top priority must be given to the construction of infrastructures that support cooperative learning processes if we are to properly harness technology's potential. In Paderborn we focus on a learner-centered – wholly java-based – approach for structuring information in teams (sTeam). (cf. http://steam.uni-paderborn.de) The key concept in sTeam is the virtual space. It draws together cooperation and communication, at the same time embodying the common external memory of a (virtual) learning group. Therefore the focus is not on interactive systems for individual accessing of knowledge bases, but rather on the cooperative management and structuring of distributed knowledge bases. Since the emerging of the World Wide Web, knowledge management consisted of creating and providing information on CD-ROM’s and WWW-Servers. Because of the difficulties in actively providing structured and organized information, most users were forced into the consuming role. Even today, providing information in the World Wide Web, needs a lot of patience and the knowledge of at least one programming language of the WWW. In its basic sense, distributed knowledge organization means the cooperative generation, management and maintenance of artifacts embodying knowledge. Artifacts represented by documents, graphics, notes and comments, and their linking by learners, thus form the basis of any method for supporting learning processes using suitable environments and tools. Asynchronous mechanisms for handling multimedia learning components or hypertexts, such as are frequently familiar from document management, are combined with strongly synchronous approaches from the area of session based systems. Such a synthesis allows new, less familiar, hybrid forms of asynchronous and synchronous cooperation between learners. Thus the sTeam system combines the idea of a room-based virtual world with the basic functionality of document management. Rooms function not only as a social meeting-point and center of a virtual learning community but also as a collaborative external memory, providing the primary media functions (cf. Hampel & Keil-Slawik 2001) as a basis for cooperative learning. This paper presents the work of a students group of the University of Paderborn, who develops new forms of Java frontends for the sTeam system. Both a two-dimensional and a three-dimensional client visualization were developed (Java/Java 3D). These clients evaluate novel ideas to support the user in navigation and interaction in these structures: The three-dimensional visualization shows an isometric view of a room. A simple avatar representation of the learners was chosen. The camera position is determined by oneself, which allows one to freely navigate within the room. Various thematic rooms are connected by doors or semantic links (teleporters). One goal of our work was to evaluate novel forms of interaction within such a virtual world. This includes both the structuring of communication within the room and the semantic structure of the room’s objects.