We present our approach to designing and evaluating tools that can assist teachers in classroom settings where students are using Exploratory Learning Environments (ELEs), using as our case study the MiGen system, which targets 11-14 year old students' learning of algebra. We discuss the challenging role of teachers in exploratory learning settings and motivate the need for visualisation and notification tools that can assist teachers in focusing their attention across the whole class and inform their interventions. We present the design and evaluation approach followed during the development of MiGen's Teacher Assistance tools, drawing parallels with the recently proposed LATUX workflow but also discussing how we go beyond this to include a large number of teacher participants in our evaluation activities, so as to gain the benefit of different view points. We discuss the results of the evaluations, which show that participants appreciated the capabilities of the tools and were mostly able to use them quickly and accurately.

Abstract. This article proposes an evaluation methodology for supporting the development of specified learning activities in virtual worlds, based upon inductive methods and augmented by the four dimensional framework [4]. The study undertaken aimed to test the efficacy of the evaluation methodology and to evaluate the broader uses of Second Life for supporting lifelong learners in their educational choices and career decisions. The paper presents the findings of the study and argues that virtual worlds are reorganising how we relate to the design and delivery of learning. This is opening up a transition in learning predicated upon the notion of learning as made up of immersive experiences rather than sets of knowledge to be transferred between tutor and learner. The challenge for tutors remains in the design and delivery of these activities and experience and the approach advocated here builds upon an incremental testing and evaluation of virtual world learning experiences. Keywords. Evaluation methodologies, virtual worlds, serious games I. BACKGROUNDThe wide reporting of Second Life has helped to highlight the wider use of immersive worlds for supporting a range of human activities and interactions, presenting a wealth of new opportunities for enriching how we learn, how we work and how we play (e.g.[1]). In this way, Second Life, in common with other virtual world applications, has opened up the potential for users and learners, teachers and trainers, policy makers and decision-makers to easily collaborate together in immersive 3D environments. Through the presence of the user as an avatar in the immersive space, the user can readily feel a sense of control within the immersive environments and more easily engage with the experiences as they unfold. The breadth of applications of virtual worlds, and their relatively swift emergence, have made this a challenging area for researchers and tutors. The work being undertaken at the UK-based Serious Games Institute (SGI) has been exploring ways to utilise the technology, and has been attempting to develop methodologies, frameworks and metrics to allow tutors and other user groups to more readily engage with the virtual worlds. However, the area is fragmented and literature is dispersed around a range of disciplines, and this makes the field challenging for those involved within it. This study undertaken as part of the JISCfunded MyPlan project (www.lkl.ac.uk/research/myplan) led by the London Knowledge Lab (www.lkl.ac.uk) is seeking to develop a set of methodologies and perspectives that may allow for greater cross-disciplinary engagement, but this process needs to be collaborative, taking on board a range of disciplinary methods and perspectives.Underpinning this approach towards producing crossdisciplinary approaches to the emerging field of serious games and virtual worlds, the SGI has been 978-0-7695-3588-3/09 $25.00

Abstract-One of the major premises of P2P systems is to enable fully decentralized collaborative functionalities for supporting work teams and P2P communities. Within collaborative systems, tracking and awareness are vital aspects for a successful collaboration. Despite the experience of using awareness in webbased applications, there has been little research in endowing P2P collaborative systems with generic, application-independent awareness mechanisms to fully support collaboration.In this work we present a distributed event-based awareness approach for P2P groupware systems. Unlike centralized approaches, several issues arise and need to be addressed for awareness in P2P groupware systems, due to their large-scale, dynamic and heterogenous nature. In our approach, the awareness of collaboration will be achieved by using primitive operations and services that are integrated into the P2P middleware. As a first step, we identify the major requirements for such an event-based awareness approach, including dynamics of events, genericity of events, lightweight mechanisms, automation via the use of rules, as well as event transformation, presentation, propagation and notification services in order to fully support timely awareness of collaboration activity. We then propose an abstract model for achieving these requirements and we discuss how this model can support awareness of collaboration in mobile teams.

No abstract