DESIGN OF A SYNCHRONOUS COLLABORATIVE

LEARNING ENVIRONMENT

Simon Schwantzer, Dirk Henrici

Integrated Communication Systems, University of Kaiserslautern, Paul-Ehrlich-Strasse, Kaiserslautern, Germany

Paul Mueller

Integrated Communication Systems, University of Kaiserslautern, Germany

Keywords:

CSCL, Learning environment, Synchronous collaboration, Synchronous Learning Environment.

Abstract:

In complex ﬁelds of knowledge, working in unmoderated small groups is a common approach for creating

knowledge out of given information. Taking a look at the portfolio of learning environments, only a few

systems provide the necessary functionality for synchronous collaboration. In most of them, synchronicity is

reduced to communication. The aim of this work is the design of a synchronous collaboration environment

which fulﬁlls the requirements to enable members of a small group working together efﬁciently via computer

networks. Based on the three elements communication, cooperation and coordination, a concept for an appro-

priate groupware is created and a ﬂexible model deﬁned. A sample environment called ”SLE” is developed to

demonstrate the applicability.

1 INTRODUCTION

Learning in complex scenarios is difﬁcult to be done

by an individual alone. A common approach to han-

dle even sophisticated learning scenarios is collabora-

tive work in small groups. In these scenarios, learn-

ing is based on different persons having a comparable

level of knowledge but different views on the subject.

The required information is available and provided

in different forms such as books, scripts, and exer-

cises. The information is transformed into knowledge

through close collaboration of the group.

Common environments for distributed learning -

like Learning Management Systems - focus on loose,

asynchronous collaboration. Close and therefore syn-

chronous collaboration is often only supported by

small communication tools like text, audio, or video

chats and whiteboard functionality. Aim of this work

is to build a virtual environment designed to fulﬁll the

requirements for a close, synchronous collaboration

amongst a small group of learners.

To identify the requirements for such an environ-

ment, elementary works about close collaboration and

learning have to be considered as well as existing so-

lutions with a comparable functionality. Therefore,

two areas of research, computer supported collabora-

tive learning (CSCL) and computer supported coop-

erative work (CSCW), are relevant for the given sce-

nario. Based on results of theoretical works and func-

tionality of existing solutions, a basic model which

fulﬁlls the identiﬁed requirements is designed, which

considers aspects of navigation, interaction, and co-

operation.

A sample environment, so-called ’Synchronous

Learning Environment’, is introduced to demonstrate

the applicability of the concept. Based on this imple-

mentation, ﬁrst results of an evaluation are presented.

2 RELATED WORK AND

REQUIREMENT ANALYSIS

The analyzed tools for distributed and synchronous

cooperative work mainly divide into two classes:

shared text editors and shared whiteboards. Shared

text editors came up at the beginning of the 1990s.

One of the ﬁrst was GROVE. The underlying work

(Ellis et al., 1991) introduced several important basics

of groupware like concurrency issues and views. In

(Dourish and Bellotti, 1992) the term ’awareness’

was coined and extended with a new type, the

423

Schwantzer S., Henrici D. and Mueller P. (2009).

DESIGN OF A SYNCHRONOUS COLLABORATIVE LEARNING ENVIRONMENT.

In Proceedings of the First International Conference on Computer Supported Education, pages 423-426

DOI: 10.5220/0001972804230426

 SciTePress

so-called ’passive awareness mechanisms’. Part of

this work is the implementation of an editor called

ShrEdit. Beside this basic developments, newer rep-

resentatives of shared text editors like NetEdit (Zafer

et al., 2001) emerged, which implemented more

recently developed improvements concerning aware-

ness mechanisms and application design. Parallel to

this, ’shared whiteboards’ where examined, which

were not restricted to simple text manipulation. An

early representative of these is wb, part of the MBone

groupware architecture (Eriksson, 1994). Aiming

to share and annotate presentations, it offers simple

drawing routines for all users. This concept was

extended by MediaBoard (Tung, 1998). Based on

the possibilities for interactive presentations, shared

whiteboards where developed towards interactive

conferencing systems like Adobe Connect Pro

Communication

Cooperation

Coordination

worflow

management

audio&video

conferecing

messanger

forum

groupeditors

learning

management

systems

shared

presentation

boards

Figure 1: Different groupware in the 3C Model.

Each collaborative technology can be divided into

three parts: communication, cooperation, and coor-

dination, see Figure 1. We can thus look at the parts

separately and classify the requirements accordingly.

Basics of distributed communication were ex-

tracted from (Fuks et al., 2006). The optimal form

of communication between human beings is a face-

to-face conversation because there are no limitations

to the communication channels. The available chan-

nels are voice, mimics, and gestures. In (Olson et al.,

1995) text, voice and video chats were exermined for

their value in small group collaboration. According to

this study, high quality voice communication enables

a distributed group to achieve the same results in col-

laboration as a local group. While a video communi-

cation is only of little additional value for the result,

it is beneﬁcial to the acceptance of a collaboration en-

vironment.

Elements of coordination are based on the above-

named groupware solutions and their workspace

awareness mechanisms. Main issue of coordination

Adobe Connect Pro, Adobe Systems,

http://www.adobe.com/de/products/acrobatconnectpro/

is the concurrency handling. The advantage of a more

restrictive system is providing clearer role deﬁnitions

and requiring less organization between the users. In

the given scenario, roles are surely existent, but the

role allocation is very dynamic. The role deﬁnition

should be as dynamic as possible and the concurrency

handling therefore less restrictive. With a less restric-

tive concurrency handling, the cost for organization

between the users increases. Aiming to reduce this

operative overhead, passive awareness mechanisms

collect awareness information in the background and

present them directly on the workspace.

In (Dwyer and Suthers, 2006) collaboration with

artifact-mediated cooperation was analyzed. Coop-

eration is deﬁned by the interaction of multiple users

with a ’shared material’. The goal is to reclaim know-

ledge by structuring information, so this is the starting

point to ﬁnd an appropriate material for the environ-

ment. A common deﬁnition of ’knowledge’ is ’net-

worked information’. ’Information’ is interpretable

data. In the given scenario, we can work directly

with information because it is already available.

Ac-

cording to this deﬁnition, the shared material is a

workspace which allows to place and link informa-

tion. The combination of a workspace, information

objects, and links is named ’information space’ be-

low.

3 INFORMATION SPACE MODEL

The information space should provide a wide variety

of information object types and good possibilities to

structure information objects. On the other hand, the

information space structure should be as simple as

possible to avoid distracting the users from the con-

tent. A concept for an information space has to con-

sider both requirements and therefore needs to ﬁnd an

adequate balance between them.

The simplest structure for an information space is a

linear array of information objects. An example for a

linear information space is pure text: the information

objects are words, sentences or sections. The link-

age is provided by their order. Linear information

spaces are easy to access, but aside from the order

of objects, there is no possibility of structuring infor-

mation. The dimension has to be increased to enable

those structuring mechanisms. This leads to a class

of two-dimensional information spaces. A member

of this class is the classic whiteboard. Following the

common nomenclature for two-dimensional spaces,

In scenarios of moderated learning, the interpretation

of data would be an additional step.

CSEDU 2009 - International Conference on Computer Supported Education

424

an information space with this structure is called ’in-

formation graph’ in the following.

Many restrictions of classic whiteboards are om-

mited with the generalization to an information graph

structure:

• Workspace: A virtual workspace needs not to be

bounded. There are no restrictions to the level of

detail a workspace can have.

• Objects: Information objects can be of any dig-

itally representable form and are not restricted to

text and graphic types. Objects can easily be ma-

nipulated, moved and removed.

• Links: Links are not restricted to symbols. They

can be moved easily with the linked objects.

Beside text and graphic objects, common object

types in virtual environments are multimedia data,

documents, and internal/external links.

While the information space model is synchronized

between all users, the visualization is not. This allows

a much more ﬂexible handling and dynamic changes

between close and loose collaboration. While the lo-

cal workspace is bounded, the global workspace (i.e.

the information space) is not. Users also can have

different views on the (global) workspace. A differ-

entiation between the global coordinate system of the

information space and the local coordinate system of

the local workspace is required. The visualization

therefore is a projection from the information space to

the local workspace. As part of the global workspace,

the information objects are also being projected. This

allows assigning multiple representations for a sin-

gle object type. Two possible representations are a

workspace representation, like an icon or label, and a

detail representation, which enables access to all ob-

ject information. The visualization of links between

objects strongly depends on form and complexity of

the chosen link model.

For the interaction with the information space, a

minimal set of object operations has to be realized:

creation, manipulation, movement, and deletion. In-

teraction between users takes place through interac-

tion with information space objects, so a small exten-

sion to the set of object operations is required: selec-

tion and deselection. An object can only be selected if

it is not selected by another user. In addition to the ob-

ject operations, linking of objects has to be provided

as inter-object operation.

’Workspace Awareness’ is part of visualization

and interation. It comprises all mechanisms which

support the awareness among the users interacting in

the (shared) information space. For visual aware-

ness mechanisms, an additional information channel

is needed, which allows identifying the interacting

users easily. An appropriate channel is available in

form of coloring. Because the workspace visual-

ization realizes loose WYSIWIS

, awareness mech-

anisms for loose and close collaboration are required.

In a loose collaboration, a user must be informed

where the other users are acting. In close collabo-

ration, a user must be informed about what the others

are doing.

4 IMPLEMENTATION AND

EVALUATION

The so-called Synchronous Learning Environment

(SLE) is a sample implementation of the concept in-

troduced in section 3. It is divided into four separable

modules: data management, user management, com-

munication, and workspace. The modularization has

several advantages: It allows to enhance or to replace

single modules without affecting the others as long as

the interface is maintained. For example, the commu-

nication module can either be a voice or a video chat

depending on user preferences, bandwidth or hard-

ware requirements.

The user management module provides user iden-

tiﬁcation and user session handling. The data man-

agement module is informed about information space

changes and maintains a persistent representation. In

the current version, the communication module real-

izes a simple voice chat. Central element of the SLE

is the workspace module. It is built as client-server

achitecture. The server provides a reference model of

the information graph. The clients share the global

workspace and are responsible for projection, visual-

ization and interaction.

The considerations in section 3 leave room for

models of different complexity. The currently imple-

mented information space model is a minimal model

according to the ﬁndings. The information space has

the form of an information graph (two-dimensional),

is unbounded and provides the functionality of plac-

ing information objects in an origin-centered, real-

valued coordinate system.

Implemented information object types are: Label,

Image, Binary, URL, and Graphlink. Label is a simple

single-line text object. Image is a container for JPG,

PNG, and GIF graphics. A Binary object corresponds

to the ’universal’ object and handles arbitrary binary

ﬁles. External and internal links are realized with the

URL and Graphlink object types. Links are realized

as simple non-directed 1:1 mappings.

What You See Is What I See.

DESIGN OF A SYNCHRONOUS COLLABORATIVE LEARNING ENVIRONMENT

425

The implemented Workspace Awareness includes

mechanisms for close and loose collaboration. Close

collaboration is supported with colored selections

and viewport tracking. Colored projections of all

viewports on a map simplify orientation during

periods of loose collaboration.

Figure 2: Synchronous Learning Environment.

The evaluation aims to analyze the concrete model se-

lection done in the sample environmentSLE. The SLE

was tested in groups of two and three users. The test

started with a blank information space. The topic was

unknown to the participants to create an equal level

of knowledge. Information material was provided in

digital form.

The basic information space structure was ac-

cepted by all users. The unbounded global workspace

accommodated the demands of a dynamically grow-

ing information space much better than a bounded

workspace does. Information objects of type Label

were signiﬁcantly more often placed than any other

types. Beside this fact, the usage of other object types

strongly depends on the form of the provided infor-

mation material. As extension to the given set of ob-

jects, a type which provides the possibility of holding

complete text was requested. In many situations the

possibility of changing the object type was required.

This functionality is therefore an important feature

for further implementations. The available 1:1 map-

pings given by the implemented link model fulﬁlled

the users’ needs whereas a feature to measure a links

weight was missed.

The implemented concurrency handling worked

well in learning groups of the given size. It has to

be observed how collaboration efforts scale with the

number of members in larger groups. An extension

showing the current actions of the other users (like

’editing’, ’navigating’, and ’idle’) was requested. In

the testing groups, this information was exchanged

with the help of voice communication. All in all the

provided voice communication was rated as a very

important element for the collaboration.

5 CONCLUSIONS

The aim of this work is to virtualize a scenario in

which knowledge is built up via information struc-

turing. Such a virtualization provides the possibility

of distributing the collaboration. With the informa-

tion space model, a concept is created which enables

a close cooperation. Aspects of coordination are taken

into account with the construction of adequate passive

awareness mechanisms. A high quality voice commu-

nication completes the functionality.

With the SLE, an implementation for the created

concept is available to demonstrate its applicability.

It enables an early evaluation of the concept, which

is at its current state limited to usage experiences.

Therefore the evaluation does not replace a compre-

hensive study about advantages and disadvantages of

unmoderated learning in a two-dimensional informa-

tion space as developed in section 3. So next, such a

study needs to be performed, ideally based on a full-

featured and reﬁned implementation of the concept.

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