Selected show cases from Kaleidoscope members

CAERUS: a complete context aware system for tourist sites and educational centres

CAERUS is a complete context aware educational resource system for outdoor tourist sites and educational centres. Designed and developed with reference to The University of Birmingham’s Botanic Garden at Winterbourne and the Hams Hall Environmental Studies Centre, CAERUS supports personalised learning opportunities within an authentic context. CAERUS consists of a handheld delivery application and a desktop administration application and provides easy-to-use tools to add new maps, define regions of interest, add theme-based multimedia tours, and deliver this information to learners through Pocket PC devices with GPS capability.

Towards the deployment of APLUSIX: a system that really helps students to learn algebra

Aplusix is a learning environment for helping students to learn algebra which. Its basic training mode is based on a microworld which consists of letting the students perform their owns calculations, thanks to a two-dimensions editor of algebraic expressions, providing feedback on the correctness of the calculations and on the end of the resolution.
Aplusix has now been used for two years at school, in different contexts. One use was made by four teachers during two entire school years in France, in the computer room, for each algebraic activity of their grade 10 classes. Another use was made in the hospital for children having a long illness. Their main outcomes were very positive. Several experiments of the system have been realised, especially in France and Brazil, with many students, with a pre-test and a post-test to measure the learning. In each case, we noticed a significant improvement of the student’s performances. These good results led us to realise a version of Aplusix for home usage in addition to the version for schools. This home version is now available as a shareware in several languages. The school version will be commercialised in 2005.

KM Quest

When you enter KM Quest™ you and two other players are responsible for the Knowledge Management in a fictitious company called Coltec. You first get an on-the-job training to get you up to speed. In this training you learn step by step how to organise the KM actions necessary for a healthy company.
After the training the real adventure starts. Your team works together to strive for the best business results within the KM budget. You set goals; you may be hindered or helped by all kinds of events that happen in the subsequent playing rounds, just like in real life. Your team should decide how to react to these events and still stay on track. You'll be able to discuss and propose knowledge management interventions.
After the implementation of the chosen interventions, the underlying game engine gives feedback on the health of Coltec by presenting the relevant numbers, graphs, and hints. Your team has to analyse this data and decide what should be done. Stick to the strategy you chose? An emergency plan? In the meantime, events will still happen.
The game ends when your team fulfils three company years. The results your team reached are evaluated by experts. You'll get feedback on the decisions you made.

ZAPs: interactive programs for learning psychology

The ZAP (‘very active psychology’) project developed computer based learning material for introductory psychology courses. The learning material consists of 50 short, interactive modules, called ZAPs, in which relevant phenomena and classical experiments from psychology are dealt with. The central pillar of the project is interaction: students are invited to actively engage in the subject matter, so that psychological phenomena can be experienced in a vivid and self-explanatory way. Interaction is realised in two ways. Students can either take the role of subject and experience phenomena themselves (either by being part of an experience or by taking part in an experiment), or they can take the role of researcher and learn by discovery (e.g., by performing experiments, for instance with a dog to learn about classical conditioning). Other characteristics of ZAPs that were taken into account in their design are that they are short, simple and concrete, so that they are geared to the students’ perception of their environment. ZAPs can be widely used in various contexts of higher education and are highly suitable for integration in existing courses. ZAPs are meant to evoke enthusiasm by the interaction they add to otherwise passively consumed texts. The design and development of ZAPs is based on several studies. Needs assessments made clear what teachers and students want and expect, and evaluation studies have taken care of a userfriendly and easy-to-use design and comprehensible texts and activities. An experimental study has shown that working with ZAPs leads to relatively good learning effects, especially on the long run, and the use of ZAPs in courses has shown that ZAPs are positively welcomed by both students and teachers.

Introducing the RADICAL project: Realising the applications of dependency in interactive computer assisted learning

The notion of dependency is familiar from spreadsheet software. The formula that defines a spreadsheet cell ensures that its value changes 'instantaneously' when other cells are updated. The potential for spreadsheets to enhance the quality of the learning experience is well-recognised. The principal aim of our exhibit is to illustrate the educational implications of using dependency from the broader perspective afforded by Empirical Modelling [EM], a methodology for modelling with dependency in which agency, observation and experiment play a central role. Simple interactive models designed to demonstrate the principles of EM and its potential relevance for learning will be complemented by more elaborate models to show how EM can be used in understanding and using scientific instruments, in exploring the circumstances surrounding a historic accident, and in making a harmonic analysis of a piece of classical music.

Co-Lab: an environment for synchronous collaborative inquiry learning

The Co-Lab system is an integrated learning environment for collaborative inquiry learning. Learners in Co-Lab engage in processes of inquiry, modelling, and collaboration in order to acquire ‘deep’ knowledge about the domain involved and to improve their inquiry, modelling, and collaboration skills.

TRAILS

This showcase displays the outcomes of the TRAILS project. The TRAILS project (January – December 2004) investigates the trails that learners follow and create as they navigate through a space of learning objects. These results include a taxonomy of trails and a description of trails in different pedagogical scenarios. Emphasis will be put on the visualisation of trails. The showcase will display several types of visualisations of trails and the metadata that are needed for the creation of these visualisations, and it will show how these visualisations can foster reflection.

Advanced video technology for collaborative knowledge building

The aim of this interactive show-case is to provide insights into our on-going research on hypervideo as a novel technology and hypervideo design as an innovative approach to collaborative learning. We approach this issue from psychological, technological and educational perspectives. We discuss the question of how social and cognitive processes involved in collaborative learning situations relate to the specific characteristics of hyperlinked video. A user interface is introduced, which draws upon annotating digital videos within computer networks. This interface provides a tool for collaboratively creating knowledge within the dynamic information spaces of learning communities. It was tested and evaluated during a specific university seminar program. Future research includes conducting similar projects in school-based education.

FearNot! Using narrative for social learning

This proposes to demonstrate FearNot!, an interactive learning environment, with narrative and synthetic characters, to address bulying problems in schools.

A MAZEing MOON- Digital experimentation Scenarios for Science Learning

This show case consists of two experimentation scenarios that were created in the COLDEX (IST-2001-32327) project. During the lifetime of the project, several different scenarios were developed. The development of the scenarios was concentrated on both, the pedagogical and technical innovations. The pedagogical background for the project was based on the idea of open ended learning tasks. These tasks build a perfect grounding for what was called Challenge Based Learning (CBL) in the project.
After presenting the technical and the pedagogical background, the two use cases are described and it is explained how these use cases can be presented as interactive showcases. Furthermore, some ideas of how the results of the work that is done within these interactive experiences can be used over the lifetime of the event, are explained.

Additional show cases

MUSIS: Educational Mobile Services to Support Learning and Communication in University Classrooms.

This interactive event displays the outcomes of the MUSIS (MUlticast Services and Information in Sweden) project. The MUSIS project is an on-going effort that investigates the use of smart phones and mobile services in university classrooms. In this event we will demonstrate several examples of the mobile services we have developed and implemented at Växjö University. In order to encourage an interactive discussion, participants of this event will have the possibility to try and to conduct hands on activities with the smart phones and the services that students are using in the project.

DUNES: Enabling moderated, written, mapped e-discussions for a better learning

DUNES (Dialogic and argUmentative Negotiation Educational Software) set up as its practical objectives to develop a methodology and advanced software tools to enable new ways of collaboration and co-construction of knowledge through Internet-mediated synchronous discussion. The DUNES learning environment builds on the graphical representation of the argumentative discussion – the "argumentative map" - as the learning engine. Students and teachers can reflect on their argumentative actions and use these reflections to further elaborate on the issue being discussed. Teachers can encourage their students to enlarge and deepen their knowledge by giving them the opportunity to challenge their own ideas through interaction with others. The DUNES system integrates three software tools - “Oasis”, “Digalo” (see sample screenshot) and “Paseo” – with advanced “awareness” capabilities. All these components feature a comprehensive set of user-friendly functions, resulting in a highly customizable and versatile system that can be readily used also in non-learning environments (e.g., in work/business milieus, including decision-making and negotiation-related implementations for managerial use). As of today, almost one year after DUNES was formally concluded as an R&D project, our system provides a unique environment that has been tried and evaluated in authentic learning settings in five countries. Backed by this experience, the tools and methodologies developed form the basis of an attractive commercial offer of products and services, as well as a solid platform for further R&D work.

CONNECT: Welcome to Plants in Space!

The CONNECT project supports science centers in a number of European countries in order to connect informal learning activities with activities in formal learning settings. To accomplish this task, one of CONNECT’s goals is to enhance existing exhibits with Augmented Reality technology. In Växjö, Sweden, we developed in collaboration with Xperiment Huset a computer controlled plant growth chamber, called BioTube, to demonstrate and study the process of photosynthesis using real plants in an enclosed environment. In relation to our on-going efforts at Växjö University, we develop educational activities as well as technology for conducting scientific experiments within the context of Plant Biology and Life in Space.