Introduction

Technological developments in computing processing power, storage capabilities, peripheral equipment and software, together with telecommunication advances in wide area networking, particularly the Internet/World Wide Web have made a significant impact on society and the educational requirements of its citizens. These not only include changes to the curriculum, but to pedagogies and learning practices as the new technologies take their place in the classroom, and also to the range of educational opportunities under the vision of lifelong learning often taking place at a distance. But although the educational potential of the new technologies is readily acknowledged and is being exploited in numerous institutions and many research teams, there are inevitable tensions as educational policies and processes come under greater administrative and financial control. Developing quality multimedia materials requires a high degree of skill and demands considerable financial resources. Exploiting networking capabilities in collaborative group working, and in giving learning support through computer mediated communication makes significant demands on tutors' time and experience if these techniques are to become an effective part of the teaching-learning pedagogy. Much research and careful evaluation is needed to guide these innovations. Further, the software packages available for providing a satisfactory administrative harness, and for assisting students in searching and utilising information resources within their workspace, which can be shared with others, have limitations and again the investment required for such developments is considerable. And they have to meet the requirements of pedagogies that are expected to stimulate and support students' creativity and problem solving, improve their communication and collaborative skills, and their competence in learning how to learn. Hence resources are also required for staff development and, indirectly, for the development of students' study skills.

Institutions are aware of these requirements, but in many cases are not sure how to adequately resource them. Indeed, these are challenging times for schools, colleges and universities seeking to meet national expectations, as well as those of students and staff. There is discussion about intellectual property rights in relation to staff as Higher Education institutions consider knowledge as a financial resource that can be exploited and exported through distance learning, which again raises issues of quality of materials, the learning experience and accreditation.

Against this background, the paper proposes to discuss four issues related to virtual education, illustrated through projects which have innovative features, but which link to practice and keep in mind the problems they address and the contexts in which they are placed. The first concerns multimedia, and suggests a method by which such materials could be produced directly from illustrated lectures but incorporating a dynamic 'hand' icon and a movement vocabulary to improve the focus and semantic progression of the content.

The second issue is directed towards interactive user support for the exploitation of information systems. The technique incorporates a higher abstraction interface linking to the data/information source, but set within a dynamic document framework which users employ to develop their explorative questions and views.

The third topic centres on synchronous on-line discourse suggesting techniques by which an awareness of group/social dynamics can be externally represented and brought into play in ways which also link to empathic and functional roles undertaken by participants in the discourse.

The final issue concerns the architectures of software systems which seek to provide an administrative and facilitative framework for educational applications of the new technologies. They can be reviewed in various ways, not only in the functionality they provide, but also in their pedagogical orientation and the organisational systems they emulate.

The conclusion overall will be that innovative and practical ideas are available in the research literature, and perhaps the way forward is to become more selective and exploit these promising themes in collaborative ways which take account of the practicalities facing institutions. How else can innovations become cost-effective and take root within an expanding but resource conscious educational system?

Learning from multimedia

There is strong agreement on the potential benefits of using multimedia to deliver content in Virtual Learning Environments. However, unless there is careful coordination and interlinking of the modalities, competition between the types of information they represent can be counter-productive for learning. Paivio's (1971) dual coding processing theory considers that verbal information, such as text and audio, is cognitively processed and organised in terms of associations and hierarchies, whereas visual information in structured in terms of whole-part associations. As Norman (1988) points out, these modalities have different properties and limitations in relation to educational goals, and it is necessary to consider the characteristics of each when designing instructional materials that use multimedia. For example, objects and processes are better recalled using non-verbal methods, but for retaining information over longer periods text can be better than sound: when the visual channel is already employed, it is usually more appropriate to use supporting audio messages than text (Beachan, 2002).

This argument has been developed by Albalooshi and Alkhalifa (2002) who consider the functions of animations and verbal representations in presenting information to students. They go on to propose an architecture which combines the two into a multimedia tutoring system "capable of combining what students need from both methods". In their experimental study, taking Data Structures as the subject matter, the multimedia system was compared with performances from the standard classroom lectures. Although the study was relatively small (with 45 students from the University of Bahrain), the results showed a highly significant improvement in test results for those using the system in comparison with the classroom control group, and the researchers attribute these benefits to a strong positive interaction between the animation and verbal representations. These benefits also seemed to hold for students with a more serialist bias and for those with a more holistic bias.

Other researchers (Chong, et al, 2002; Elsayed, 2002) have pointed out that conventional lessons and lectures use a variety of media that are considered by their presenters to be well integrated and sequenced. Indeed, the Web lecture is becoming more popular for delivering course material economically and, as Chong et al note, the technique gives distance students the feel of the classroom. Also improvements in media streaming technology, and commercial supporting software has enabled much more versatility in styles of presentation and their accompanying narration. However, there are problems, some technical, and some with lecturers who feel anxious or reluctant about preparing presentations that will be given a more permanent status and disseminated to a wider audience.

Chong, et al, (2002), have developed a system (Whiteboard VCR) for producing and presenting lectures which "supports the synchronisation of slide mark-ups and slide-switching with a narration that can mix audio, video and speech synthesis together". The advantage of this design is that presentations can be recorded at leisure, or authored on the fly, or captured live and then edited for viewing on demand. The authors emphasise that the system uses Text-to-Speech technology so that users can give live or pre-recorded presentations, or a mixture of the two. From an economic viewpoint the material is a resource that can be reused and edited, and the cost of production and maintenance is lowered using text-to-speech editing, and both storage and bandwidth requirements are reduced. The Whiteboard VCR system has been used in a variety of contexts and formats.

Elsayed (2002) argues that in human communication, for example in multimedia lecture presentations, the hands perform a natural integrating function by assisting the navigation, in conjunction with the narrative, of the sequence of displayed objects that form the visual content of the presentation. He labels his concept HANDO (Hand Assisted Navigation Over Displayed Objects) and in a project which has the support of the Computer Based Learning Unit at Leeds University, Elsayed is developing the HANDO function for virtual learning environments.

Elsayed is careful to distinguish the use of hands to direct a visual navigation content from the use of hands in providing content by drawing schematics, for example. Nor is he addressing the function of the hand in whiteboard contexts where again the aim is to produce material on a shared whiteboard space (Cheok and Li, 1995; Hoffert, 1996). It is the integrative function leading to a more coherent and semantically enriched narrative which is of interest. In speech (or text) which is usually expected to carry the narrative, the audio signals are perceived sequentially, whereas for visual material, as Paivio noted, the perceptual and cognitive processing is a combinatorial activity and, in Elsayed's view, HANDO is the integrating agent that can cohere and complete this narrative framework. To achieve such an objective, HANDO must reveal meaning and contribute non-verbal content to the communication process. This requires more than the control of attention through hand-pointing, but enriching and aiding the user's interpretations through visual traces that form a type of "hand schemata". Hence Elsayed has developed HANDO as an extension to natural language which includes actions of pointing, underling, encircling, linking, and the generation of patterns indicating, for example, sequencing and flow of control. This moves beyond a multi-modal mark-up language, as proposed by Ishizuka Laboratories (2000), since Elsayed's objective is to develop an integrated symbolic representation of the multimedia content. The prototype system has been initially trialled with science content for 16-18 year old students.

A second issue addressed by Elsayed is the economic production of materials incorporating HANDO. Video can be an expensive medium in terms of bandwidth in relation to the informational content which is conveyed. However, developments in object-based video-coding, in contrast to a frame-based approach, can achieve higher compression ratios and assists user interactivity through its identifiable set of objects. Also standards are being developed (MPEG7) that can guide the classification of video material in these terms, i.e. in terms of its multimedia object oriented content. Elsayed defines cost effectiveness as the ratio of the bandwidth requirements of the communicated object to the bandwidth of the communicating medium, and suggests identifying the information bearing objects with the content being communicated, and then converting each object into a format that has minimum bandwidth requirement for the purpose of transmission, and rendering them back to the original format at the receiving display terminal. A software prototype, using Macromedia Director, was developed for the conversion techniques for materials that incorporated the three elements of narrative, i.e. speech, video content, and the associated HANDO objects. The system has been trialled with schoolteachers, and has now been modified to capture directly the instructional delivery of teachers, instead of having the delivery captured on video for subsequent conversion. Elsayed noted that while training teachers in using the system, their instructional performance improved beyond the delivery sessions they attended for the project. This (Elsayed, 2002) attributes to the "structured nature of the technique that clearly identifies components of the narrative content as depicted by the acquisition system".

Supporting the exploitation of information systems

With the advent of wide area networking and the World Wide Web, an increasingly large range of educational resource materials are becoming available for students and teachers alike. Access and structuring of these materials is through a variety of search engines, and/or by establishing URL links to local websites that are focused on course or topic requirements. These searches and organisations can be performed individually or collaboratively by course teams or student groups.

However, the Internet also allows access to large databases in Medicine, Science and the Social Sciences which can provide useful data and material for a variety of educational projects. But many of these sources are so large and complex that users can have considerable problems both in the searching and retrieval of relevant data, and in the exploitation of such data within their task requirements (Korth and Silberschatz, 1997). Typically, users need to understand the data source structure and to be familiar with the mechanisms of data access. These mechanisms usually involve formal query languages such as SQL (Structured Query Language) which can be complex to learn and use for those with limited technical experience, or the provision of specially designed user interfaces which can be expensive to develop and can place constraints on the user.

At the University of Leeds, a research project has been addressing these issues. There have been two main approaches. First, access is provided by building Extended Data Models (based on a mini-ontology) on top of the existing database that links the users' queries (or, more exactly, facilities for composing queries arising from task requirements) to the data structures. Second, the notion of dynamic or active documents as a working interface for users is being exploited in which data interactions, and the rendering and representations of results, occur through the document framework itself. A prototype system has been developed to demonstrate the usability and benefits, achieved at low cost, of these concepts in action (Bennett, 1999).

One specific context of this research was a Regional Cancer Registry in the UK which maintains a large database of all cancer cases (including patient data, diagnosis, place and type of treatment) extending over a time period of more than thirty years. This data source is used by Health Authorities, Universities, Hospitals, Cancer Charities, Local Government, Drug Companies, the Press, and Schools. Since the database is large and complex, Registry staff serve as intermediaries between the user and the data, but providing this support is expensive and tends to inhibit follow-up queries. Hence the aim of the research was to design and validate a dynamic document based interface suitable for non-technical users, linking their interactive queries to the data and to its presentation and visualisation, and in ways which would support different styles of working.

In order to link the users' task requirements to the data structures of the Cancer Registry, a series of predicates were defined to provide an Extended Data Model which the users could employ in their queries and exploration of the database. From an analysis of the types of questions asked by users, a set of focus themes was identified namely 'what' (i.e. questions about a cancer or tumour site); 'who' (i.e. queries involving information about people/ patients); 'where' (relating to geographic region and location); 'when' (requiring information about trends and time-base of data); and 'how' (requiring information about treatments). These focus elements can be linked and from them a series of predicates for users was developed that were responsible for retrieving information from the database (via SQL transformations) completing the necessary processing and retrieving the results-in various forms of specified display-to the user. In brief, the predicates form a type of ontology of the domain and can be organised to provide descriptions, comparisons and trends. They are the building blocks of the documents users employ as a workbase.

The notion of a 'document' has been much discussed in the research literature (eg. Bray, 1998, Schamber, 1997) where the dynamic features of digital documents have been emphasised. These include easy content revision, linkage to other sources, incorporation of multimedia: they can be readily searched, stored, displayed, and transported. Hence the document can be both a framework and a facilitator of the users' tasks, and can assume a variety of types, depending on which particular features are supported, eg. Interactive, Dynamic, or Virtual, where Virtual documents are not pre-written but are generated in response to users' needs (Gruber, et al, 1997; Bennett, et al, 1996). Also, they can link to multiple information/data sources and can be continuously updated since they can retain their links to these data sources.

Sprague (1995) defines a document to be a "set of information pertaining to a topic, structured for human comprehension, represented by a variety of symbols and stored as a unit". In the Leeds scheme a document is composed of a set of self-contained document fragments, each linked to the foci noted previously and constructed from the set of query predicates and their associated parameters. These parameterised fragments provide the document structure and a document view is obtained when the structure is filled with the appropriate data (and text supplied by the user), and visualised according to the user's preferences (Bennett, 1999). The implemented query system, linked to the Extended Data Model, operates under a Document Manager which controls the facilities for searching, retrieving, processing, and visualising the data, and the system acts as a component within a DUDE (Decision-support User Document Environment (Thomas, 1999)) also developed at Leeds and implemented in Java. DUDE is a component based architecture for integrating disparate information systems and simulation models within an Active/Dynamic Document framework. It renders documents as HTML and within DUDE components are objects that can be placed within a document and enable functionality to be given to that document, eg. for connection to external databases or simulations, and to mathematical and visualisation components.

The system was validated in two studies. The first was in a school-based project which investigated whether the decrease in pollution as manufacturing declined in the region, the changing patterns of smoking in men and women, and changing patterns of employment seemed to be related to changes in health. The Cancer Registry data, covering both industrial and agricultural regions was extremely useful and gave substance and more authority to the project. The teacher in charge had a good idea of the project structure he wanted and tended to follow a top-down approach to the document building. In contrast, a study for medial students in producing patient information sheets showed exploratory methods of working since the structure of the information sheets (i.e. what should be included and how the data should be arranged and introduced) was not clear initially. Hence techniques of storing, recalling, editing fragments, and then sequencing them with connecting text fragments, was the working approach which was followed (Bennett, 1999). This approach, and the DUDE system, has also been applied in applications in Science/Engineering and Education Administration. Note that the documents and document fragments can be stored in parameterised form, and recalled and edited for use on later occasions. Hence the system can become customised for the range of task requirements of users.

Collaborative learning through discourse

One of the advantages of wide area networking of special interest to Virtual Education is collaboration between students and tutors through synchronous and asynchronous on-line communication, specifically via CHAT and Conferencing Systems.

Although such facilities and support are desirable, even necessary for learning at a distance, enabling the sharing of multiple and differing viewpoints, the difficulties in effectively managing such discourse are well known. These include, in CHAT sessions, unruly turn taking, overlapping threads of discourse, off-subject comments, and mere passive participation by 'lurkers'. The benefits of discourse arise from collaboration under common task goals, engagement with participants conceptualisations which can spontaneously result in interesting patterns of thought and argument (Hartley, 1996), and the learning stimulus and resources which can result (Wenger, 1998; Reeve, et al, 1998).

Such discourse encompasses a variety of aims: the learning of domain knowledge, learning how to learn from the group, and how to assist the group in operating more effectively as a learning unit. The last two aims relate to an awareness of the social dynamics of the group and the development of empathic skills. These dynamics influence the ways shared meanings develop-or do not develop-and which meanings are legitimised and take root. Structurisation Theory (Giddens, 1984) focuses on the perceived interpretations of the interactive discourse 'rules', the power/dominance structures in the group and the norms that govern the acceptance of actions and ideas. But reflection is necessary to test the validity and implications of these ideas, and of the discourse characteristics and functional roles that influenced these developments. Hence both content and process and affective factors are involved in such reflection as, ideally, the group members learn to become co-learners. Mezirow (1978, 1991) refers to these processes as transformative learning and are related to Kolb's (1984) notion of abstract conceptualisations arising from critical reflection.

In discussing the interplay between emotions and learning, Kort and Reilly (2002) interweave emotive axes with the cognitive dynamics of the learning process. These emotion states, varying from negative to positive, are set in a matrix with knowledge construction axes which include Anxiety-Confidence; Boredom-Fascination; Dispirited-Enthusiastic; and Humiliation-Pride, which are organised within a four-quadrant model of constructive learning. The emotive-empathic responses motivate participants as they seek and develop a social presence and location within the group. In face-to-face meetings facial expressions, body language, and tone of voice, are all indicators of the affective state of the participants and the group, but how can these influences on the collaborative learning process become apparent in on-line CHAT sessions?

Kuminek and Pilkington (2001) working at Leeds on a Literacy Project with multi-ethnic distance students (aged 13-15 years) have attempted to address these issues. They used synchronous CHAT sessions and focused their attention on the ways the tutor and the supporting CMC system (which operated under WebCT) could improve literacy and discourse skills. For example, in managing the group discussion, it was agreed that students should use full sentences with the expectation that this would foster a more reflective atmosphere and give a greater emphasis to literacy while maintaining a balance so that overlapping and parallel messaging did not become a serious problem. Also, to help the participative patterns to be more apparent, different colours were assigned to the students so that they could readily identify and link to the discourse contributions that were made by particular students. To give a representation of the interactive empathy of the group, a variant of Babble's social proxy meter (Erickson, et al, 1999) was proposed. This gives a visual display of participants (shown as coloured dots-following the colour assignments noted above) assembled in a circle. When a participant 'speaks' or 'listens' (i.e. types a comment or manipulates the interface) the student's dot moves nearer the centre of the circle, and drifts outward if there is no activity. Hence the visual gives a dynamic and shaped display of the interactive distances of the group's participants. This representation can be observed by the tutor and the students, and photo icons linked to the coloured dots can give a more personalised view of the group and its dominant participants.

To encourage the group to be more aware of their functional roles in discourse, Kuminek and Pilkington have used a technique employed by other researchers (eg. Robertson, et al, 1998) namely sentence openers which indicate the intention of the discourse move, eg. challenge (Doesn't that depend on …..? How do you know that?) a counter-argument (But I think …..) Acceptance (OK, I see your point of view.) Statement (I think that …..) and Conclusion. These are not exclusive for the aim is not to inhibit the spontaneous ideas and expressions of students, but to guide them in the useful functional roles they can take in discourse. Further, such techniques, which view discourse at a higher level of abstraction, are useful for reflection about the interactive process and ways of learning effectively from groups (Baker and Lund, 1997).

Administrative frameworks for virtual education

Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) require software systems for management that interlink course delivery, computer mediated communications, and assessment data. A variety of such systems have been produced by commercial companies and by universities. Typically, these include and manage noticeboards, course outlines, course materials and assignments, e-mail, conferencing, whiteboard and CHAT tools, class tests and students' workpages.

One of the advantages of Virtual Learning Environments is that they can act as repositories for (multimedia) materials which can have wide dissemination and which, if properly designed, can be edited and modified for reuse with corresponding economic benefits since the developmental costs of high quality materials is considerable. The European CANDLE Project (2000-2003) is a consortium of academic and commercial partners examining the issues and tools which are needed to set up "Collaborative and Network Distributed Learning Environments". Specifically, the aim is to provide procedures and support tools for creating, structuring and reusing learning materials to improve the delivery of instruction. The system includes pedagogical analyses which delineate semantic and rhetorical relationships between tutors and students, and which also link to a domain ontology to guide its search/navigation facilities.

There are several VLEs in common use, and Britain and Liber (2001) provide frameworks for reviewing and evaluating them based on two models of the instructional process. The first references Laurillard's (1993) conversational model of learning, focused on Discursive aspects (eg. teachers' and students' conceptions being accessible to each other), Adaptive features, Interactive facilities and Reflective opportunities (eg. teachers supporting the feedback process through an interlinking with students' activities). Britain and Liber relate these aspects to types of actions including Teachers and Students presenting conceptions, Teachers setting up activities and Students interacting with them, and the System providing feedback with Students modifying their actions in response to feedback. Under these criteria, an evaluative framework is produced which reviews twelve VLEs, including WebCT, Lotus Learning Space, Top Class and First Class Systems.

However, the authors also introduce a contrastive review model based on the ways organisations manage complexity, and in particular how technology can assist them to "become self-managing while remaining within the overall guidance of management" (Liber, 1998). Communication is needed for resource negotiation, coordination and monitoring, at course and institutional level, and the review criteria are broadened to link individualisation with self-organisation and adaptation. From these criteria an evaluation framework is constructed which places a different but complementary perspective on the twelve VLEs being reviewed. This is focused on developing "individualised activities for a large number of students", but also on providing support for resource gathering and self-organisation. Britain and Liber maintain that VLEs, under the vision of Lifelong Learning, will become key strategical components of teaching and learning, and it is important in designing and reviewing VLEs to be aware of their educational and organisational capabilities in relation to the developing course requirements and functions of institutions.

A concluding comment

There is little doubt that Virtual Education invites a re-appraisal of the ways instructional materials are produced and delivered, the range of pedagogies that are employed, and the ways CMC are developed to provide high quality support and stimulation for learning through collaborative techniques that engineer a greater sense of social presence. This paper sought to present some issues that underpin these aspects of Virtual Education, and to outline examples of research which not only relate to theories and models but which have a practical focus and, in their various ways, take some account, even if indirectly, of the economic and logistic factors which currently influence the direction and pace of educational innovation.

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E-mail: J.R.Hartley@cbl.leeds.ac.uk.