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Learning Technology publication of IEEE Computer Society |
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Volume 10 Issue 1 |
ISSN 1438-0625 |
January 2008 |
Managing 3D Virtual Classrooms
Non-verbal conversational interfaces and feedback
GYM2LEARN – A Web Annotation System for Text
Comprehension
Designing online courses in the light of learning
styles
Using Adobe Acrobat Connect to promote online
community
Creating learning paths in Blackboard Leaning System
Welcome to the January 2008 issue of Learning Technology.
This newsletter focuses on bringing emerging technologies in education to the readers. New developments and practices with learning technologies are the core of this newsletter. This issue covers enhancements on existing course management systems to 3D virtual classrooms.
Antunes et. al. describes a way of monitoring the students’ within a virtual classroom. They discuss a pilot study conduct to identify the key points in tracking students’ activities on formal learning sessions within a virtual classroom. Railean describes issues relating to design problems on non verbal interfaces and the role of feedback. Chiazzese et. al. describes a tool named GYM2LEARN which enables students to annotate web pages. This tool can be used with web based learning tools so that the students can takes notes while learning through the web.
Franco looks at how online courses can be designed taking into account the different learning styles of the students. Schroeder and Tutty looks at the use of Adobe Acrobat Connect tool to promote online community and limit isolation. Veglis describes the new enhanced features in Blackboard Learning System and how they are implemented within the institution.
This newsletter focuses publishing new and emerging technologies in education focussing on advanced learning technologies and its usage in different contexts. Please feel free to bring forward your ideas and views.
Besides, if you are involved in research and/or implementation of any aspect of advanced learning technologies, I invite you to contribute your own work in progress, project reports, case studies, and events announcements in this newsletter. For more details, please refer author guidelines at http://lttf.ieee.org/learn_tech/authors.html.
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Ali Fawaz
Shareef, PhD Director General Centre for Open Learning Maldives |
Managing 3D Virtual Classrooms
Introduction
Although
online distance learning is not a novel subject, recent emerging technologies
expanded the notion of what a remote virtual learning environment could mean.
One such technology is 3D virtual worlds.
3D virtual
worlds can be described as online, persistent, avatar-based, virtual social
spaces that provide users a sense of immersion and allow the interaction with
other users and the environment. These worlds combine the sense of “being
there”, also found in Virtual Reality (VR) systems. However, VR systems lack
the ability to incorporate several students simultaneously in a learning
situation; they also don't provide students with the communication and user
interaction capabilities available on social environments to foster the
development of collaborative tasks. This ability and capabilities are found in
3D virtual worlds. Some, e.g. Active Worlds[1] and Second Life®[2], also allow the users to create world content,
and furthermore provide the tools to develop novel in-world objects and a
programming API to render possible the development of behaviour-rich content,
tailored to instructional needs. For instance, Dickey [1] presents two case
studies where Active Worlds was used to support synchronous and asynchronous
online learning as well as provide a friendly virtual campus.
Moreover, institutions
may take advantage of these new affordances to provide virtual classrooms that
support integrated synchronous and asynchronous interaction far beyond that
which is traditionally found in asynchronous Course Management Systems (CMS)
and bandwidth-consuming videoconference tools. Since content can be created and
scripted by the users themselves (and not only by specialized content
developers), virtual worlds can be used to implement diverse laboratory
classes. In particular, it can be used in a similar way to traditional
face-to-face computer science programming labs where students’ have to
accomplish a programming assignment.
One issue
that arises is: how can one monitor students inside these virtual classrooms,
in order to better understand their difficulties and plan (and provide)
adequate measures? Several examples, e.g. CourseVis [3] or Moodog [4], can be
found, mostly concerning asynchronous learning supported by CMS. These systems
rely on data collected by CMS to provide instructors with some insights on the
students of the course. On the other hand, Chen [2] presented a system based on
synchronous videoconferencing communication that is able to provide classroom activity
indicators (speaking, making gestures, or moving in their seats) based on each
student’s corporal behaviour.
Though it
is valuable information to know how present systems allow course management and
distant student tracking, more research is required since virtual worlds’
learning affordances do not directly map onto traditional teaching practices.
In order to
better understand how learning activities are performed inside virtual worlds
and how can be managed a pilot study was conducted.
Pilot study
During the
fall semester of 2006, a pilot study was conducted to identify key points about
tracking students’ activities on synchronous formal learning sessions inside
the virtual world of Second Life. Ten first- and second-year computer science
students of the University of Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro (
At the
beginning of the semester, students were given one programming assignment that
should be completed by the end of the semester. Attendance was required once a
week for two-hour synchronous sessions during which teachers would provide
lecture material and students could state their doubts, in order to overcome
their difficulties and misunderstandings. Figure 1 shows one such session.
Students could develop their assignments both during these sessions and beyond
them.
Figure 1 – Example of a
synchronous session.
Students
were asked to develop and script objects in order to accomplish a desired
behaviour. (The image was edited to preserve students’ anonymity.)
Among
others finding, this study showed us Second Life lacks the capabilities to
proper manage instructional related information (e.g. assignments, submissions,
attendance).
We are
currently developing an ongoing project in order to support the management of
student assignments inside virtual worlds that is able to track, store and
reproduce in-world students’ actions. An existing project, Sloodle [5], aims to
give Moodle CMS a 3D representation inside Second Life. Instead of recreating
the same existing features of a CMS inside a virtual world, we are extending
CMS functionality to support the management of synchronous activities inside
virtual worlds and track students’ in-world actions so instructors can have a
detailed view of each student’ path.
References
[1] Dickey, M. (2005). Three-dimensional virtual worlds and distance
learning: two case studies of active worlds as a medium for distance education.
British Journal of Educational Technology. 36 (3). 439-461.
[2] Chen, M. (2003), “Visualizing the pulse of a classroom”, Proc. 11th
ACM International Conference on Multimedia, Berkeley, CA, USA, 555-561
[3] Mazza, R., and Dimitrova, V. (2003). “CourseVis: Externalising
Student Information to Facilitate Instructors in Distance Learning”. In:
U.Hoppe, F. Verdejo, J,. Kay (eds.) Proc. of the International conference in
Artificial Intelligence in Education. Sydney July 20-24. (AIED 2003). IOS
press. pp. 279-286. ISBN 0922-6389.
[4] Zhang, H., Almeroth, K., Knight, A., Bulger, M., and R. Mayer (2007). "Moodog: Tracking Students' Online Learning Activities", World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia & Telecommunications (ED