Proposals
for the Virtual University
Patrice Arnera and Eric
Busch
University
of Sophia-Antipolis
Nice, France
INTRODUCTION
Today, our world is
going through a silent but real
revolution: the electronic revolution.
As past revolutions, the industrial
revolution for example, this electronic
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 behaviors 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
reflections on multimedia's influence on
different domains as well as for
launching experimental projects.
To achieve this, we want to develop a
virtual architecture (similar to that of
The World Chats) in which participants
could meet on-line and, in real time,
exchange messages, ideas, etc.
I. THE VIRTUAL
REALITY UNIVERSITY:
Our purpose is not
to create a normal university on-line,
but rather to create an added value to
already existing university. 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: 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 is located in the Alpha
Worlds, a virtual 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 behaviors in virtual
worlds.
The VRU is a multinational university
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.
II. THE AIMS
In general terms,
the project aims at distributing
knowledge in multimedia technology and
networks among university 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 create a "transnational"
university:
A university in which students and
professors from the whole world could
interact, and therefore bring together
their cultural differences in the purpose
of connective intelligence.
To design for tomorrow by matching
practice and theory by:
1. 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 university for 5 years and then
never come back anymore, but rather that
they will have to go through different
phases of training at different period in
their professional lives.
2. 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.
3. To teach multimedia by using
multimedia
III. 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 also implies the end of
mass education. VRUí s mission is to
bring back the old model of mentors and
followers and transforms the lecture to a
journey of initiation through the virtual
world and towards knowledge. In this
perspective, the VRU refuses the Push U
Pull U model of education to an exchange
model of education.
How you learn and
also a certain curiosity attitude/
question in attitudes.
Different from the academic system,
virtual university has 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 university.
Learning is exchanging and not only
receiving information/knowledge.
This will be an open university, where
professionals, students, and novices can
meet and exchange knowledge, information.
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 registrar.
Enviromorphing according to user profile:
Enviromorphing is
the fact that the whole environment is
shaped by the userí 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 university,
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 feasible by
letting user define his profile at
anytime as well as the system recognizing
the user's evolution.
Define default keywords or criteria which
can be customized. Can have as much as
possible to as refined as possible, or
remain at a basic level.
In the register, people give in their
names, e-mail addresses, 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 put
out the people 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 university
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 areas 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 university 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 university
- open
discussion rooms
- meet person
General services of
university
- Library
- environment
for workshop-team work
- environment
for individual studies
courses-contact with teacher
- place to
meet colleagues, specialists,
professionals (informal,
organized specific discussion)
- university
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
organization of workshops, conferences,
recruitment, contacts...
The News Wall will follow the concept of
enviromorphing and propose only what fits
in the userí 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 contain a data base of people
and contacts and will of course follow
the enviromorphing concept.
FORMAT:
For the moment, the
Virtual Reality University is built in
the Alpha Worlds. However, we intend to
develop the Virtual University in the
VRML 2 language as soon as the technology
becomes available.
CONCRETE EXAMPLE:
Here is an example of a possible scenario
which could occur at the Virtual Reality
University:
- Landing
- Student
looking for orientation level:
graduated from high school,
looking for a major in
communication
- Student meet
Bot is a guide: Bot greets
students, Asks him what he wants
to do
- Bots tells
student to follow him
- Bots guides
the student inside the
communication corridor
- Walking
through the corridor, the student
finds a door marked ěMass
Communicationî
- Interested
by this field, the student goes
in the the room and faces several
other options. One of them is
broadcasting.
- The student,
very much interested by this
field of study enters the room
and the bots leaves him.
- At this
point, the student goes into the
workshop rooms and meets a U
student who tells him about the
functioning of the workshop and
explains the library and the
simulation room. TheU student
brings him to a mailbox and by
clicking on it access the room
coordinator's e-mail.
- After an
overview of what this field of
study offers, the student meets a
guide bot who gives him the
advice to go to the simulation
room.
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 VRU Prototype Web
page
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.
MORE 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
Eric BUSCH
Technical
Support:
Philippe
BENTHIEN
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