Title: Title: Collaborative Web Applications
and Virtual Environments
Performer(s):
Jan Prins
Department of Computer Science
University of North Carolina
Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3175
David Stotts Phone: 919-962-1833
University of North Carolina
Lars Nyland Phone: 919-962-1796
University of North Carolina
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Cluster: CAPER
Contact Information:
Phone: 919-962-1913
Fax: 919-962-1799
email: prins@cs.unc.edu
Phone: 919-962-1833
email: stotts@cs.unc.edu
Phone: 919-962-1796
email: nyland@cs.unc.edu
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1. Instructional Focus:
Content areas/topics: Potentially all subject areas. The technology will enable teacher/developers to prepare modules for use in many parts of the curriculum.
Process skills: Not applicable.
2. Target Population: Developers of collaborative multi-media courseware.
3. Summary Description: There are two parts to this project. 1) Cobweb (formerly MMM: Multi-head Multi-tail Mosaic), a collaborative web document server. 2) Composition of single-user virtual environments (VEs) to create a heterogeneous shared virtual environment.
1) COBWEB
Cobweb permits the following:
- Synchronization of multiple browsing streams, therefore controlling the sequence of the browser's movements in the presence of multiple readers.
- Concurrent browsing paths during the same browser session.
Web page authors can use new HTML tags to program the browsing path behaviors they want readers to follow, including:
- Links that become available when other links have been followed by all collaborating readers.
- Parallel browsing streams involving different readers at different workstations.
Scenario 1
As a concrete example, consider the following scenario: A pathology instructor is preparing a corpus of information to teach students how to read an autopsy report. For pedagogical reasons, the instructor has three goals: 1) Students should always be aware of the autopsy protocol (the summarizing cover sheet for the autopsy). 2) Students should refer to both the textual description and high-resolution photographs for most sections of the autopsy. 3) Due to the nature of the current case, students should not progress past the internal examination of the neck without having already seen the external evidence relating to the neck.
The author can arrange that this module can only be activated if the current page (head-neck.html), the head photo page (head.html), and the head description page (head-desc.html) are all being displayed by the browser. The author can also ensure that the head photo and head description pages must be advanced in parallel to the neck photo and neck description pages. The author has control of what the user sees, where the user is told that he is going, the pages the user must have already visited, and the pages the user will see afterwards.
Scenario 2
As another scenario of CobWeb use, consider several students learning the methods by which legislation is made in Congress. A CobWeb document can be written that requires several students to concurrently browse it. Each student performs a different role during browsing; the net group effect is that the CobWeb provides a simulation of the activity being described. As they all browse, one might compose and propose a new piece of legislation. When done, the legislation is presented to the others for viewing. Comments are collected and visible by all; another link allows private communication between a student and the author. After viewing is completed (signaled by each selecting a link which is synchronized to only progress after all have selected it) a voting phase is entered in which each student's preference is recorded by link following. The final outcome is announced by CobWeb taking the browsing session to an announcement page depending on the total number of vote selections.
Through concurrency and synchronization, the links in the CobWeb provide programming to define group interaction protocols. The HTML document content provides multimedia explanation of the actions or conditions that are in effect at each stage in group browsing. Different readers see different sections of
the CobWeb, or different renderings of it, according to their role and the progress of the other readers.
2) COMPOSITION OF SINGLE-USER VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENTS TO CREATE A HETEROGENEOUS SHARED VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENT.
Current virtual environments (VEs) are developed mostly as stand-alone systems. If a new VE is needed, it must be constructed from the ground up as a new software project (a lengthy, expensive procedure).
Consider an example from a user's perspective. Assume you have a VE that allows a single user to "explore" the architectural design of a new building. Assume also that I have a VE that allows several
users at various places around the country to appear to be sitting around a table having a meeting. Why can't I easily combine these two systems to get a program that allows a group of people
to walk through a build design, discussing what they see?
We are researching the software engineering principles behind modular construction of VEs so that new systems can be built by combining existing ones. We call this interoperation -- several systems executing separately while appearing to be a unified by sharing data and execution information across a network.
We are developing methods for expressing abstractly the capabilities and functionality of VEs; methods for using these abstractions to generate the data translations and network interconnections among VEs automatically; and methods for rapidly adapting a distributed VE to changes in the computer and communications network.
4. Training and Staff Development:
- Teacher prerequisite skills/knowledge needed: Computer skills
- Student prerequisite skills needed: Web-browser skills
- Training needed/provided: Authoring tools will be produced to assist in defining group browsing protocols, as well as sample collaborative web documents.
- Technical support needed/provided: Within the limits of our resources we can assist authors using Cobweb.
5. Technological/Resources Needed: The system with completely standard browsers is intended for use on any platform connected to at least a local area network. A Sun Sparcstation (or similar) with Unix on the LAN will server as the collaboration coordinator. The browsers will use this collaboration coordinator as a proxy web server.
The virtual environment demonstrations will use hardware specific to the VE applications. They will come later as we see what MOO technology evolves in Caper.
6. Intended Outcomes:
Students: Will experience web-based learning in groups.
Teachers: Will produce curriculum modules specific to their own needs using the Cobweb technology.
7. Instructional Time Required: Determined by modules created by teacher/developers.
8. Role of the Pilot Teacher(s): Identify a candidate teaching environment, select one or more collaborative activities that are taught there, encode the descriptions and simulations of these collaboration processes in Cobweb documents, have the traditional instructors review it first for correctness of content and presentation, try it on a class. Get feedback from this trial to improve the collaborative presentation of the information, repeat later half of the assessment procedure.
9. Example(s) of the Use of this Product (Scenario): Early versions of the Cobweb ideas are implemented on a modified browser (MMM) that implements the collaboration semantics on a single workstation. Access to papers describing the system and the browser itself are available via http://www.cs.unc.edu/~stotts/MMM/
