The design and implementation of a learning collaboratory

Abstract

Early CAI efforts focused on the transmission or delivery of knowledge to the student. Subsequent work in intelligent tutoring systems took a more cognitive approach and attempted to emulate the behavior of skilled human tutors via software. More recent work has focused on collaborative learning processes, and the idea of a collaboratory as a virtual space for work. This paper describes a design process to support the development and use of collaborative learning technologies. This process, the Learning Collaboratory Design Framework (LuCiDiFy), integrates methods and concepts from cognitive systems engineering, theories of learning and instruction, distributed computing and computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL). LuCiDiFy is instantiated in an actual software testbed, the Collaborative Learning Environment for Operational Systems (CLEOS). CLEOS is a collaboratory for teachers, students and practitioners in the physical sciences, and in particular for NMR spectroscopy and X-ray diffraction experiments. CLEOS includes two virtual instrument tutorials, CVS (Collaborative Virtual Spectrometer) and VXRD (Virtual X-Ray Diffractometer); an asynchronous messaging system, the Question Board (QB); a project-based design environment, TOSP (Tool for Organizing and Supervising Projects); and an architecture for developing collaborative apprenticeship learning systems, CALOT (Collaborative Apprenticeship Learning Object Toolkit); an authoring environment, BAUEN (Basic AUthoring ENvironment); and a collaborative multi-user domain (MUD) infrastructure, MudSpot.