Date: 05 Jul 1996
INTRODUCTION: Today,
our world is going through a silent but real
revolution: the digital revolution.
As past revolutions, the
industrial revolution for example, this digital
revolution is going to affect the structure of
our society significantly and will hence imply
drastic changes. In this perspective, every field
of human knowledge (arts, sciences, economy...)
as well as human behaviours will have to link
their evolution to multimedia.
Our purpose will therefore
be to bring students and professors together
during virtual workshops via the electronic
networks. These virtual workshop will serve as a
starting point to different reflexions on
multimedia's influence on different domains as
well as for launching experimental projects.
To achieve this, we want to
develop a virtual architecture in which
participants could meet on-line and, in real
time, exchange messages, ideas, etc ...
THE VIRTUAL REALITY
UNIVERSITY:
Our purpose is not to create
a normal forums on-line, but rather to create an
added value to already existing forums. That is a
virtual environment where student, professors,
experts and non experts could meet and discuss
topics either in workshops, private open
discussion or messages: to practice connective
intelligence in a structured virtual environment.
What is a workshop?
Workshop: a group of people with different
qualifications leading a given project to achieve
a specific goal. A workshop can be constituted
for a limited lap of time (few hours to few
months).
In this environment, an
exhaustive database of people and documents will
be constantly reinforced by the publishing and
reading of documents in the Virtual Library.
For the moment, the Virtual
Reality University are located in the Alpha
Worlds, a virtual world world in which 75 000
registered users live. The VRU is located next to
Sherwood Towne which is a virtual city which
served as the basis of social experiments on
human behaviours in virtual worlds.
The VRU is a multinational
forums constructed by the world 24hr a day in all
time zones and where users can be everywhere and
nowhere and are not restricted with being
somewhere.
THE AIMS:
In general terms, the
project aims at distributing knowledge using
multimedia technology and networks among forums
students and professors in order to prepare them
to tomorrow's electronic world and to practice
"connective intelligence" in a
structured virtual environment.
More precisely, the VRU has
the following aims:
* to design for tomorrow by
matching practice and theory by:
- supporting lifelong
learning:
As we have mentioned in the
introduction, today technologies are evolving so
fast that people constantly need to update their
knowledge in a certain field in order to keep up
to date and avoid becoming obsolete. This implies
that people do not have to go to forums for 5
years and then never come back anymore, but
rather that they' ll have to go through different
phases of training at different preriod in their
professional lives. - enhancing the cooperation
between students and professionals:
Through workshops run by
professionals, databases, using real-life
simulations, ... students will get a better
insight of what their future professional career
will look like if they follow such or such kind
of studies.
The above also implies an
improvement in connective intelligence by sharing
and exchanging information and expertise and an
enhancement of the cooperation between the
academic world and the actual market.
* to teach multimedia by
using multimedia
* ...
THE PRINCIPLES:
* Just in time education:
This principle is the engine
to achieve our aim of providing lifelong
learning. The VRU will in fact supply what people
will be asking for, at the time they' ll be
asking for it.
* Learning is exchange:
The end of mass
communication (Networks and Interactivity now let
people choose what they want to receive and when
the want to receive it) also implies the end of
mass education. VRU s mission is to bring
back the old model of mentors and followers and
transforms the lecture to a journey of iniation
through the virtual world and towards knowledge.
In this perspective, the VRU prefers an exchange
model of education to the traditional Push U Pull
U model of education . Different from the
academic system, virtual forums have a flat
hierarchy, there is not a single person with all
the knowledge but every person has the same
status. Exchange of information is the main rule
of the virtual forums. Learning is exchanging and
not only receiving information or knowledge.
Students can meet people who
work in a professional environment and share
their working experiences. On the other hand,
professionals can inform themselves about a
specific topic for a given project. Otherwise,
they can re-fresh their knowledge. Workshops can
be created in short term with the help of the
register.
* Enviromorphing according
to user profile:
Enviromorphing is the fact
that the whole environment is shaped by the
user s own characteristics. By defining a
profile on their first log-in, users will state
their field of interests, and during their
journey, the environment will be constantly
reshaped to match his profile. User will
therefore have access only to what they are
really looking for. When people come to the
virtual forums, they can choose, very precisely
their own information. They can also consult and
contact the persons that they want, following
their interests of the moment.
As we have seen before, this
is feasible by letting the user define his
profile at anytime as well as the system
recognising the user's evolution.
In the register, people give
in their names, e-mail adresses, working
qualifications, field of interests, and also
workshop participation. People are selected in
this register by their profiles. The register is
the key to find contacts and people in a specific
field of knowledge.
In the register, you pick up
the people in which you are interested for
formation of new workshops. In this way, the
register creates a real database.
Here is an example of which
information a student and a professional profile
will be looking for:
Profile: students
* identify level ( graduate,
undergraduate....) * identify the field of study
and interests... * identify level of knowledge in
a specific topic
#Needs
* get educational background
* get a degree, exams * get a knowledge in this
specific topic * take part in workshops or
discussion (exchange ideas) * visit other fields
of study as those taken in real forums * prepare
a professional career * update info obtained
during previous years of studies * launch
projects or participate in experiments * meet
students, experts ... * internship * training *
orientation * get in different kind of education
# to bring
* a new vision * connective
intelligence * proposal for discussion *
receptive brains * research papers to be
published in the library * cultural aspects
depending on backgrounds
# access
* library (both reading and
posting) * chat rooms * simulation room *
classrooms, workshops... all area but should
respect a certain behavior.
Profile: professional
# needs
* search info * do a
specific workshop * refresh knowledge, actualize
knowledge * talk to other professional-
researcher/ talk to students * search for
cooperation * info about the forums or curriculum
* to do a simulation or an experiment
# to bring * real life
working experience * publications or others
products * teacher * give consultancy: contribute
to a discussion * request for research, stagiaire
# access to
* Library ( non confidential
info) * public places in the forums * open
discussion rooms * meet person General services
of forums
* Library * environment for
workshop-team work * environment for individual
studies courses-contact with teacher *place to
meet colleagues, specialists, professionals
(informal, organised specific discussion) *
forums information desk * a simulation room/ room
to set up experiment- ask for students to be the
best person * place to leave publication or
products * classroom to teach-or
videoconferencing
* Provide a virtual staff
Not only will there be a
real staff, composed of professors, experts and
professionals but there will also be a virtual
staff. The virtual staff will consist of bots.
Bots will be used as automated serving of
classrooms and instructors, guides, people
finders, librarian bots...
* ....
METHODS FOR COMMUNICATION
AND CAPTURING KNOWLEDGE:
* On-line chats
* Documents published in the
library
* News wall:
A wall where messages about
what is going on in the VRU at what time, for
example, the organisation of workshops,
conferences, recruitment, contacts...
The News Wall will follow
the concept of enviromorphing and propose only
what fits in the user s profile.
THE LIBRARY:
The library is the place
where users search information about such or such
topic. The library will consist of a data base
with links to Web sites as well as article
published by users themselves (similar to a
visual newsgroup). The library contains a data
base of people and contacts, and will of course
follow the enviromorphing concept.
The aim here is to create a
self running database accessible by all to
facilitate the search of information and prevent
obsolescence of information.
The library could also be
accessed by all as a pay-for-information database
and could be used as a worldwide database
constantly refilled by researchers publishing
their latest results or thesis. Publishing
information could be free, and access to
documents could be payable either by the number
of minutes spent or by the number of documents
consulted.
The VRU could be physically
hosting this enormous database, which could be
accessible by every forums, firms or anyone in
the world at any time. This could become the
fastest way of getting latest trends in such or
such domain, and hence a necessary tool for
forums students, experts as well as researchers.
FORMAT:
For the moment, the Virtual
Reality University is built in the Alpha Worlds.
In the Alpha Worlds, the Virtual University is
accessible through our Web page by following this
procedure:
Downloading the Alpha
Worlds software from http://www.worlds.net
Teleport to the virtual forums by clicking
on Teleport to the VRU Main Gate on our Web page http://www.ccon.org/theU/sophia.htm
Here is an illustration of
what the VRU looks like in its demo shape:
Shown here from above is a
corridor linking a room to the library.
An independent Alpha Worlds
server dedicated to education will soon be
available and the first draft of the VRU will be
located there. This first draft will be part of
TheU project which is developped by Contact
Consortium.
However, we intend to
develop the Virtual University in the VRML 2
language as soon as the technology becomes
available.
CONCRETE EXAMPLES:
Here is an example of a
possible scenario which could occur at the
Virtual Reality University:
In this simulation, the
student is writing a thesis on experimental
psychology and is therefore looking for
supporting material in the VRU. The
student meets a bot who welcomes him and asks him
what he is looking for. The student
answers that he is looking for some supporting
material for his thesis. The bot teleports
him to the library in which only materials
referring to the students field of interest are
indexed. In the library, the student is
reading through the index and select a document
by Dr. Psychoexpert. The students
instantaneously receives the document in his
e-mailbox and along with the document is a note
saying that Dr. Psychoexpert will be running a
workshop on such topic in the VRU between such
and such dates. The student, interested by
attending a workshop ran by Dr. Psychoexpert
returns to the VRU on these dates and takes part
in the discussion.
Here is another possible
scenario:
Mr. Drawthings is working on
the layout of posters and printed works. He as
recently bought computers in order to integrate
Computer Aided Design to his work. However, Mr.
Drawthings has never learned to work with
computers. He has heard of the Virtual Realtiy
University and its Lifelong Learning concept. Mr.
Drawthings decides to visit the VRU in order to
update his knowledge on that matter. Mr.
Drawthings arrives at the VRU Main Gate and is
greeted by a bot. the bot looks human and uses
common language, thus making Mr. Drawthings feel
at ease. The bot asks Mr. Drawthings about
what he wants to do, and Mr. Drawthings answers
that he would like to know more about Computer
Aided Design softwares. The bot teleports
Mr. Drawthings to a room in which small demos of
Computer Aided Design softwares are running.
Mr. Drawthings clicks on a computer
labelled "Pictureshop 4.2", the
software that he would like to use on his
machines. Mr. Drawthings gets a short
description of the software and screen shots
describing its main features as well as screen
videos showing "how to".
Interested by this software, Mr. Drawthings
clicks on a button labelled download software.
A dialogue box appears asking Mr.
Drawthings if he allows his financial information
to be uploaded to the FTP server. Mr.
Drawthings acknowledges yes and confirms his
choice. The VRU connects on an FTP server,
and in a matter of minutes, Mr. Drawthings
receives the complete software. Mr.
Drawthings is also informed that they are several
workshops or lecture sessions in the VRU that
constantly explain the evolution of softwares and
teach users how to use them.
This screen shot shows a
student in the VRU:
THE TEAM:
Conceptor: Patrice ARNERA
(101323.2632@compuserve.com) Eric BUSCH
(101620.1036@compuserve.com)
Technical Support: Philippe
BENTHIEN (benthien@riviera.fr)
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