An Educational Environment Using WWW

Eleonora Bilotta, Centro Interdipartimentale della Comunicazione, Dipartimento di Scienze dell'Educazione, Universita' degli Studi della Calabria, Rende (CS), 87036, Italia; tel. & fax +39 984 401967
email: EleBi@ccusc1.unical.it

Mariano Fiorito, Centro Interdipartimentale della Comunicazione, Facolta' di Ingegneria, Universita' degli Studi della Calabria, Rende (CS), 87036, Italia; tel. +39 984 401967 & fax +39 984 469417
email: MFiorito@ccusc1.unical.it

Dario Iovane, Centro Interdipartimentale della Comunicazione, Facolta' di Ingegneria, Universita' degli Studi della Calabria, Rende (CS), 87036, Italia; tel. & fax +39 984 401967
email: DIovane@ccusc1.unical.it

Pietro Pantano, Centro Interdipartimentale della Comunicazione, Dipartimento di Matematica, Universita' degli Studi della Calabria, Rende (CS), 87036, Italia; tel. & fax +39 984 402182
email: PiePa@ccusc1.unical.it

Abstract:
Developments in computers networks offer not only a wide range of possibilities in terms of spreading knowledge, but also many problems about retrieving and obtaing stored informative contents, which users are interested in. It seems that a such networking environment could play an important role from an informative and educational point of view. Actually, by using computers networks, it is feasible to realize virtual classroom to offer remote student full, interactive partecipation in a class that would previously have been restricted to students who were attending locally (1,1993).

In this paper the authors present a WWW student-centered educational environment that has been realized using a particular methodology which allows students to be inside an informative area. In this area they are able to focus on the topics they prefer, to satisfy their particular instructional needs and also to make an educational and engaging path, through a specific set of tools. A Mosaic sensitive map makes it possible to start the navigation in the organized cyberspace, by choosing one of the displayed topics. After choosing the topic the students are interested in, they have a set of tools by which it is possible to access to the following functionalities:

This set of tools can be different according to the choosen topic.

Keywords:
virtual classroom, educational environment, computer supported cooperative work, digital library.

1. Introduction

The proliferation of computers and electronic networks have been creating a 'tunk of thought', a huge informative global system where it is possible to "hunt" the information we are looking for; this way of acting is quite similar to the specific behavioural models of the Homo sapiens sapiens. Many are the disadvantages, for users without any hunting tools, associated with this information researches: a sense of confusion or feeling of disorientation in the cyberspace and also lost time. Hunting informations can also poses problems in the management and the organization of the informations, in the quality control of the contents, and in the possibility to widen the universe of new users. This last point has been exiting the interest of those in the know in extending the use of computers networks to commercial areas or to restrict it to academic ones.

Last but not least, there is the resulting problem of spreading knowledge through the networks which means:

Distance education and virtual classroom can be considered useful tools for delivering knowledge remotely, since they allow users to create their own instructional paths by using different technological alternatives (such as electronic source on Internet, electronic mail, conferences on-line, cooperative work, etc.) and by deeply involving users themselves within the informative contents.

Psycho-pedagogical studies on the education field have shown that students can better learning by managing, manipulating, and organizing the information by their own.

In the following section the authors describe a model of student-centered educational environment which is built up through new functionalities, allowing students to search, to manage and to spread meaningful and substantial informations according to their own informative needs.

2. Overview of distance learning on WWW

The possibility for the users to perfom a search of informative contents through hierarchical and referential links is a function allowed by WWW. This characteristic of the WWW system (which could be similar to the connection made in the human mind between different contents) makes it feasible to build a particular learning environment.

The potential for the actual technology and in this case for the WWW system is to create a distance education environment which can exist beyond the traditional boundaries of a particular location to a broad range of students involving them in a high interactive partecipation. Such environment must be in accordance with the new theories of communication systems; consistent with the instructor's philosophy and style of teaching; convenient, accessible, and relevant to the students; and, finally, well-organized and well-presented. (1,1993)

The Mosaic application can be a useful Web tool for producing distance education environment. All lectures can be distribuited from one site to another by HTML documents which can contain graphics, rich text, sound, and video; so a HTML document can be similar to a trasparencies presentation used in a traditional classroom. Using a HTML document means changing the nature of the communication in terms of medium and also in terms of materials in the presentation. Moreover the distribution of the presentations could be remotely or real-time combining the Mosaic HTML documents containing the lectures with a video conference (1,1994).

A HTML lecture, apart from graphics, text, sound, video, animation, simulations and more, can contain links to others HTML documents stored in some server around the world. It is very common in a real lecture that human tutors freely refer to their own previous explanations (2,1994); a link to a previous HTML lecture enable students to review the explanation and other information related to it and it will increase the effectiveness of the student learning of the task. Consequently, all these elements, contents and links, must be organized following teachers philosophy and their style of teaching in order to satisfy the users educational needs.

The HTML lecture can also contain large bibliographies, collections of page images, electronic journals and magazines, videos and other resources (3,1994) used in the preparation of lectures or relevant to the subject being talked about. These useful computerized materials is stored in powerful digital libraries that will improve the quality of the learning experience through interaction with rich research resources(3,1994).

The communication between student and teacher or student and student can be done by sending messages via electronic mail. Email message tipically contain text only, but increasingly graphics, spredsheets, images, sounds, animations, executable programs, videos, or other structured objects can be included.

WWW, in conjunction with Mosaic, is an extremely effective mechanism for distributing and sharing information. However, access to this information is unidirectional, asynchronous, and limited by a client/server model in which only predefined data are provided. Recent works (5,1994) show the attempt to augment WWW in order to support bidirectional, synchronous communication that will allow real-time collaboration between teachers and students in a virtual classroom.

The model of educational environment, the authors present in this paper, concerns not only activities regarding the distance learning in a virtual classroom, but it also provides an environment in which users are allowed to search, to manipulate, and to access informative contents through tools which were alreday available separately on the network such as email, ftp programs, etc. .

3. Design and architecture of an educational environment using WWW

This section describes the architecture, design of a Mosaic application developed at the Centro Interdipartimentale della Comunicazione (CIC) at the University of Calabria (Italy). The educational environment is accessible via the Home Page of the Web informative system of the Center (URL: 'http://www.cubo20.unical.it') (8,1994).

The basic idea of the model is to build an environment where users can investigate through the links to other documents, different fields of knowledge (already organized for the Center instructional needs) and to wide the functionalities of the actual virtual classroom. Students need all tools to build their own educational paths. The simulation of a real classroom through the distribution of electronic lectures (remotely or on-line), providing exercises, dialogue (via email or private chat) with teachers or other students, creation of workgroups for cooperative work, and the attendance conferences with experts of various fields are just a part of the whole student training. In fact, traditionally, education programs include instructional tours for visiting libraries, museums and research/cultural centres in order to allow students to get in touch with the subject they are learning.

Similarly the educational environment the authors have built, offers users the possiblility to navigate in a hypermedia way through the wide range of servers which store the information such as museums, laboratories, cultural agencies, universities , digital libraries and more.

The following section is a brief description of the features of the designed educational environment model. The Educational Environment Home Page prodives users with an opening screen containing three links to different kinds of information:

Initially, the students could put their name down for a specific lecture. Then they are able to go into the "topics" HTML document containing a sensitive map, by which it is possible to start the navigation choosing one option. These topics are organized into three areas (system communication, multimedia, and computers networks) and are accessible by a simple selection in the map.

Once students have choosen one topic they will be "taken to" another HTML document where the following set of instructional tools is visualized:

a) The virtual classroom option contains pages for the lectures, informations on courseware students and on teachers. Each lecture consists of explanations on the subject with links to study in depth related arguments and related bibliography. The informations on students and teachers consist of their curricula and how they can be reached via telephone, fax , email to ask for clearing up some points and for collaboration with each other. Teachers put their meeting time-table for private-chat and conference on-line. Moreover, they send explanations via email which can contain textual data but also software applications, bibliography, WWW sites and more. The teachers, in order to temp students both to take part to the lectures and to use tools for the cooperative work, create groups of work who develop exercises on the particular subject of the lecture. The exercises are equally subdivided, in terms of tasks, among the students in order to improve the quality of the results and to temp students to collaborate with each other. This collaboration is carried out via network by exchanging files; the teachers hold periodically a conference with the students with the intention of valuating the state of art of the job. This area is also dedicated to hold exams for groups of students (in order to estimate the cooperative group work skill) or for single students (in order to find out possible gaps in the single learning process). The basic aim of the educational environment is actually to offer a student-centered learning environment which is satisfying in terms of subject explanation; the exams are needed just to check the learning skills of the students and to provide them with useful and effective suggestions.

b) The museums option allows students to access home pages of electronic museums all around the world. The collection of the museums depends on the choosen topic and it is made by the human tutors according to their teaching philosophy. A prototype of access to Museums, organized in a hypermedia way, has already active in the CIC Home Page (URL: 'http://www.cubo20.unical.it/server/museo/museoglo.htm') (9,1994).

c) The digital library option is a set of informations and resources about the topic, organized by the tutors. It is similar to a hypermedia path or to a recommended bibliography. In this area it is also possible for the students to use special retrieval information tools such as 'Lycos' and then to start the hypermedia navigation among the Internet servers.

d) The cooperative work option will take users (especially researchers of the topic) to an environment for sharing data and resources with others researchers that are working on the same topic.

e) The last option is the for the seminaries and conferences; here students can access investigations on specific contents through the distribution of seminaries via network. In this area conferences are activated in order to allow students to formulate relevant questions which are discussed by the experts of the field.

CONCLUSION

All tools and resources that have been used for building the educational environment are present on the network. The authors' intention is to utilize them for instructional aims in order to change the network functionalties from a simple communication system to an educational tool.

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