Peer Conversations for e-Learning in the Grid

Abstract

We take the view of 'learning as a conversational process', and argue that this can be extended to include the notions of peer-group interactions among students, tutors, and even artificial agents. This in turn lends itself to an approach to distributed conversation which builds upon modern Instant Messaging tools, and extends such tools to include what we call enhanced presence: a way of monitoring the availability of (and interacting with) fellow students and tutors at a distance. We describe a scenario being developed in the recently-started European Learning Grid Infrastructure 'ELeGI' project, deploying our own BuddySpace tools, and describe the novel contributions that this approach can bring to e-learning.

A Scenario Based Analysis of E-Collaboration Environments

“…At the end of this analytical phase, we wish to obtain the abstractions representing the reality in a significant way. We considered that the best mean to ensure this purpose, is to start from observing real e-collaboration cases like e-learning sessions [1], vote scenarios [2] and virtual meetings of research teams; this way we choose an empirical approach to experimentation. In the following, we present the preliminary conclusions we have obtained.…”