A bootstrapping scenario for elicitating CSCL services within a GRID virtual community

Abstract

Amongst the various eLearning techniques, Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) is of growing interest within the academic world. However, during the first phase of the EleGI project, a noticable fact has been the difficulty to match the user needs with the potentiality of the GRID services. Thus, through a fictive scenario, this article proposes to walk the path between the idea of creating a new virtual community and the realisation of this objective. This scenario takes the situation of a famous scientist wishing to set a Virtual Centre of Excellence (VCE) and put the emphasis on the bootstap (i.e. the really first steps). An interesting comparison is to analyse this scenario firstly in a context using traditional techniques (system oriented architecture and Web services), then secondly using a service oriented architecture offered by the Grid services. Our aim is to match this bootstraping scenario with these contrasted contexts. This might be one of the reason that explain the increasing interest in Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) within the academic world [CSCL]. 1.2 CSCL within the EleGI project CSCL is a broadly investigated area within the EleGI project. One of the EleGI objective of particular interest in the present article, is the definition of a Grid based architecture for Collaborative Learning. This is the chance for Grid as a newly introduced technology for CSCL to be investigated in the angle of human centered approach. The EleGI project proposes such kind of orientations with the called Open Grid Human Service Architecture (OGHSA) [GOU03] a derivative of the Open Grid Service Architecture (OGSA) specifications[FOS02]. At this stage, the project has identified some characteristics of CSCL, in particular within Virtual Communities (VC) [D13]. VC has been introduced in 1993 [RH93] and was defined as follow: Vir t ual com m u n i t ies can be concep t ualized as social aggregat ions t hat emer ge f ro m t he Net w hen enoug h people car ry on t h ose p ub lic d iscussions lo ng eno ug h, w i t h su f f icien t hu man feeling, t o f o r m webs o f perso nal relationshi ps in cyber.

The Grid Shared Desktop: A Bootstrapping Environment for Collaboration

“…The idea of using desktops on the Grid was suggested in the Entropia project [7]. A study of Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) applications in a Grid context was also addressed in [11]. An example is Gridcole, a Grid based system that enables easy integration of CSCL application [6].…”

“…We have proposed our GSD solution [26] to boost CSCL (Computer Supported Collaborative Learning) activities. In a paper we published 2004 [11], we started to outline our approach by defining the bootstrapping aspects of a collaboration. Then, we presented the original GSD framework last year [10].…”