Marisa Ponti
email: marisa.ponti@ped.gu.se&ryberg@hum.auc.dk

Thomas Ryberg

Rethinking Virtual Space as a Place for Sociability: Theory and Design Implications

Keywords: Activity theory, artefact, place, sociability, social interaction, virtual space

In this article, we offer theoretical reflections on the notion of place in which learners supposedly develop and evolve a structure of social interactions in networked learning environments. We claim that a general concern is to develop more social artefacts that may help learners organise the virtual place in a way that is meaningful to them and helps foster their social presence. Drawing from symbolic interactionism we examine the ways in which individuals interact with their environment, and from Activity theory, Wenger's communities of practice, and Wartofsky's taxonomy of artefacts to elaborate on the notion of social artefact.

INTRODUCTION

One of the major beliefs of current thinking about learning is that learning is a social, cultural, and interpersonal process, which is driven as much by social and situational factors as by cognitive ones. In this view, teaching and learning constitute a social process of communication that occurs in a social and cultural environment (e.g., the classroom or the workplace). The classroom is the place where a structure of social interactions develops and evolves and where a number of events happen and influence students' behaviour. In other words, the classroom is the "formative context" [START_REF] Ciborra | Formative Context and Information Technology: Understanding the Dynamics of Innovation in Organizations[END_REF], where participants routinely engage in active creation and attribution of meanings. In other words, it is a place in which students and teacher make sense of who they are and what they are expected to do.

In this article, we argue that the great flexibility of virtual spaces, with their potential sense of transience and impermanence, plays a role in shaping the way routines and rituals are formed. This requires participants to engage in a process of re-creation of meanings to cope with the involved uncertainties and not rely on a passive process of simple acknowledgment of the new place.

Thus far, designers of networked learning and computer-supported collaborative learning environments have paid most attention to technological capabilities and far less to the support of a social context. This lack of attention resembles the lack of research into the interface between education and design of educational facilities that [START_REF] Sommer | Personal space: The behavioral basis of design[END_REF] lamented, being educators mainly concerned with student behaviour and designers with aspects of the physical environment.

This article intends to develop some theoretical reflections on the following questions:

• How does the social design of networked learning environments change the nature of sociability? Does it allow us to engage in meaningful relationships that help us define who we are and what we are doing? • How can networked learning environments become a more social artefact?

Being a socially situated tool, software is not designed in a historically blank and culturally neutral way, but tends to embed the systems of meaning of its designers. We claim that a general concern is to develop ways to increase the probability that social interactions occur in a network-based learning environment and that a more social artefact may help learners organise the virtual space in a way that is meaningful to them and helps foster their social presence. We conduct an analysis drawing on symbolic interactionism to examine the ways in which individuals interact with their environment, and from Activity theory, Wenger's communities of practice, and Wartofsky's taxonomy of artefacts to elaborate on the notion of social artefact.

THE ACTIVE, CONSTRUCTIVE AND MATERIALISTIC NATURE OF LEARNING

In activity theory (AT) the relation between an individual and the object of activity is mediated by a variety of man made artefacts (Vygotsky, 1979). Drawing upon the works of Leont'ev (1978), it also becomes apparent that activities are fundamentally collective phenomena, which cannot be understood in solely individual terms. On the contrary, development of the human psychological functions and our interaction with the environment are seen as embedded in socio-historical collective and productive activities mediated by material artefacts.

A second important notion within the activity theoretical framework is that humans are not merely a product of a biological or societal development, but they are active constructors of their social and material environment. The productive activities in the social and material world simultaneously transform and change our psychological functions (Vygotsky, 1979).

In this sense, not only does the use of mediating artefacts concern how we act upon the world, but also how the artefacts that we produce "act back upon us".

AT emphasizes that learning is something taking place among the learners and not only in the individual head. Hence learning is seen to be facilitated through dialogue and collaboration, and the importance of externalisation and reification of mutual understandings, dialogues and reflections into shared external artefacts is clear in [START_REF] Engeström | Activity theory and individual and social transformation[END_REF][START_REF] Engeström | The horizontal dimension of expansive learning[END_REF].

Equivalence can be found in Wenger's theory of what constitutes meaning (Wenger, 1998). The negotiation of meaning is a twofold process of participation and reification: on the one hand, people interact with each other and engage in the community; on the other hand, they externalise and objectify their negotiated meaning. Through a community's interactions over time, the community establishes what Wenger calls a "shared repertoire". The shared repertoire includes e.g. routines, rituals, tools, symbols and concepts: "The repertoire combines both reificative and participative aspects. It includes the discourse by which members create meaningful statements about the world, as well as the styles by which they express their forms of membership and their identities as members." (Wenger, 1998, p. 83).

Whereas Engeström primarily focuses on productive activities (e.g. the objects and outcomes of the activity), which are mediated by a community, Wenger focuses more on the ongoing participation, engagement and production of meaning within the social practice itself. From these two perspectives, we can identify two closely intertwined processes and artefactual differentiations: the products and sources of the learning process (models, concepts, documents, discussions), and the ongoing social construction of meaning and identity of the learning community. While the former is a more immediately observable level of the learning process, the latter is a more invisible level that, however, is crucial as it defines the meaning of the objects and outcomes of the learning community. Thus learners as a social entity simultaneously produce concrete artefacts and a community or social landscape, in which the meanings of these artefacts are negotiated. These processes underline the importance of supporting sociability within networkbased learning environments.

Teaching and Learning as a Social Process of Communication

Activity theory and Wenger's theory provide a point of departure for the analysis of teaching and learning processes, as these perspectives allow us to examine the dialectical relationship between learners, their role as producers, and their social environment.

Typically a classroom consists of a group of individuals who work together in a certain room space over a period of time. In this environment, from their first encounters, both teacher and students:

"join together to construct and conduct the events and activities and the routines and rituals that define their daily lives. As individuals they interact, they observe, monitor, and interpret the behaviours and actions of others …" (Weade, 1992, p. 94).

Together, teacher and students develop and evolve a social structure that establishes social norms, permissible behaviours, interpersonal relationships, etc. In this context of social interaction, participants foster the learning process through social exchanges (such as give and receive feedback, guidance, encouragement, etc.) [START_REF] Collins | Learning in classroom settings: Making or breaking a culture[END_REF]. This social structure is the texture in which the "structure and meaning of an evolving academic discourse is embedded" (Weade, 1992, p. 95). In other words, the development of a social structure mediates the kind of interactions between participants: who can talk to whom, in what ways, for which purposes, under what conditions, and with what real or expected results.

THE NOTION OF PLACE AND ITS IMPORTANCE FOR SOCIABILITY

Generally speaking, human activities take place in enclosed spaces that are supposedly designed to support them. Places are not just hollow containers, but spaces whose design and layout intertwines with the creation of social structures. A place plays an important role in "encoding the cultural and social understanding of the behaviour and actions appropriate to an environment" [START_REF] Lee | Fostering social interaction in online spaces[END_REF].

The classroom has been and still is the traditional place of teaching and learning. The classroom place -as well as the whole institutional setting in which the classroom is located -with its size, design, features, equipment, and physical gatherings influences the socialisation process. The classroom is the "formative context" where participants routinely engage in active creation and attribution of meanings. It is a place in which students and teacher make sense of who they are and what they are expected to do, by sharing understanding of appropriate behaviours and interpretation of environmental cues.

Typically these physical elements are implicit and their influence on social behaviour is often taken for granted. However, when we work in a virtual space, the structure of social interactions that may support the learning and teaching process is most often "invisible" to the participants and the need arises to make it explicit [START_REF] Dirckinck-Holmfeld | Distributed computer supported collaborative learning through shared practice and social participation[END_REF]. The great flexibility of virtual spaces, with their potential sense of transience and impermanence, arguably influences the way routines and rituals are formed. This requires participants to engage in a process of recreation of meanings to cope with the involved uncertainties and not rely on a passive process of simple acknowledgment of the new place. In so doing, they become involved in a process of place-making, which is necessary in order to appreciate the online environment [START_REF] Lee | Fostering social interaction in online spaces[END_REF] and, in turn, to develop conditions for sociability meant as the intensity and frequency of the need for social contacts.

Virtual Places: Designed for Socialising? Sommer (1992) affirmed that interior classroom space has been taken for granted by both designers and users. He thought that designers were too concerned with the physical properties of the building, while teachers and students tended to adopt a fatalistic attitude and take the building as a given on which they had no control.

Oddly enough, the same neglect seems to happen with network-based learning environments.

So far many designers of network learning and computer-supported collaborative learning software have devoted much attention to various tools intended to support collaboration, cooperation and community-creation: email, bulletin boards, whiteboards, and shared task, just to mention a few. They have failed, however, to consider how to foster and sustain conditions that support a social context [START_REF] Kreijns | The social affordances of computer-supported collaborative learning environments[END_REF], despite the fact that in computermediated communication (CMC) failures tend to be more frequent at the social level than they are at the technical level [START_REF] Gunawardena | Social presence theory and implications for interaction and collaborative learning in computer conferences[END_REF], and many empirical studies report disappointing results [START_REF] Kreijns | The sociability of computer-supported collaborative learning environments[END_REF]. [START_REF] Kreijns | The social affordances of computer-supported collaborative learning environments[END_REF] ascribed this lack of attention from designers to the common idea that social interaction will happen anyway, just because it is technologically possible. Besides, network-based CSCL software, albeit useful to some extent to support collaboration, is seriously limited by node to node connections that tend to support individual interactions, rather than multiple or connections within groups to create shared contexts on an ongoing basis [START_REF] Mynatt | Design for network communities[END_REF]. Another questionable assumption is that social interactions mediated by network technology follow the same patterns as those that occur face to face. In our view, this assumption dismisses that communication mediated by network technology is a different medium from physical proximity. In this medium, technology is not a passive tool but interacts actively with individuals, by affording them to do certain things, while constrains them in other ways.

Building on the idea from activity theory that tools reflect and affect what people think, we assume that a dialectical co-evolution of learner, electronic medium and learning and teaching situation should be put in place.

The implications for social interactions mediated by computers are in terms of understanding whether the design of the software to be used allow to define conditions which increase the likelihood that a social context is developed to trigger learning mechanisms and in turn generate cognitive effects.

DIFFERENT LEVELS OF SOCIAL ARTEFACTS

The notion of externalisation/reification plays an important part in the collaborative learning process, as externalised artefacts are both important facilitators for, and the outcome of, negotiations of meaning. The process of collaborative learning is facilitated by existing artefacts -but artefacts are also an outcome of the learning process through the learners' production of new shared artefacts, such as models, concepts, theories, the styles and discourses by which the members construct meaning, sense of belonging and identity. Artefacts can thus be seen as crystallizations of the produced knowledge and as parts of the shared repertoire of the members. This view seems to imply that we should understand learners as very active producers of knowledge in a more concrete, materialistic sense. An important question in this vein becomes how we can design virtual learning environments that recognize the needs of learners to produce these various artefacts. This brings us to look more into the concept of artefacts. In this article we are especially concerned with what we coin as 'social artefacts' in relation to virtual learning environments. By 'social artefacts', we mean tools that play a part in constructing a sense of mutual accountability, belonging, negotiation of identity and roles between the learners. What functions as social artefact is always something to be analysed in practice, and therefore we will not propose a list of 'social artefacts'. Rather we will draw upon Wartofsky's and Engeström's notions of artefacts in order to propose different analytical levels of social artefacts, which might show useful in future analyses of virtual learning environments. [START_REF] Wartofsky | Models: Representation and scientific understanding[END_REF] and [START_REF] Engeström | Learning by expanding[END_REF] identify three levels of artefacts: primary, secondary and tertiary artefacts.

"Primary artefacts are those directly used in this production; secondary artefacts are those used in the preservation and transmission of the acquired skills or modes of action or praxis by which this production is carried out" (Wartofsky, 1979, p. 202).

The tertiary artefacts are conceived of as objects of 'imaginative construction'. Though they are grounded in worldly practice, they are also freed from this and can serve as possibilities, visions, which can be thought of as a playground for restructuring of practices, identity and rules. [START_REF] Engeström | Learning by expanding[END_REF] further interprets the tertiary artefacts as ideologies or methodologies underlying an activity, and thus also as potential vehicle for development and change, as they are at the same time resources for creative and imaginative reorganisation of activities.

As for primary artefacts in virtual learning environments, we suggest these to be considered as concrete tools of production, or rather the possibilities for actions, whether this is initiation of a chat, videoconference, uploading a document, answering messages in a forum or playing a mini game.

How does the environment afford social interaction and learning activities (which encompasses both the availability and usability of various tools)? We suggest that secondary artefacts should concern the ability of the virtual environment to sustain, preserve and organize over time the communication and negotiation processes, the working routines and the ongoing social interaction of the learners, thus underlining mutual accountability and belonging. Also the secondary level should be considered as the environment's flexibility in enabling the learners to structure and reorganize the working processes, resources for learning and modes of social interaction. The preservation of dialogues, modes of practice and interaction simultaneously serve as a record for the learning-and social processes. As practice is reified in the learning environment, it may become visible to the participants, and can thus serve as a springboard for creative reorganization of activities -as a tertiary artefact. For example the visibility of peoples' engagement in online dialogue can facilitate discussions on individual engagement or hidden power relations opening for dialogue on members' roles in the process. Furthermore, the tertiary aspect could be interpreted as the implicit rationale of the learning environment or the underlying pedagogical model of the system (Tolsby, Nyvang & Dirck-ink-Holmfeld, 2002). To what extent are certain routines and rationales already embedded in the design of the system? Some of these aspects will be analysed later on.

MAKING SENSE OF WHERE AND WHO WE ARE IN THE ELECTRONIC MEDIUM

As said before, the social structure created by teacher and learners is the texture in which the "structure and meaning of an evolving academic discourse is embedded" (Weade, 1992, p. 95). Symbolic interactionism [START_REF] Blumer | Symbolic interactionism: Perspectives and method[END_REF] gives us a good theoretical basis to understand the structure of social interaction in the online medium:

• Individuals act on objects based on the meaning that the objects have for them. Blumer defined an object as "anything that can be indicated or referred to". In a network learning environment, objects are social, such as individual peers, groups, teachers, etc., physical, such as computer hardware and software, and abstract, such as feelings individuals have about themselves, the others, and the online environment itself. • Individuals create meaning of things by engaging in social interactions.

• Individuals change the meaning of things over time as interpretive processes occur.

In this perspective, the electronic medium does not shape human behaviour but contains mechanisms that people use to develop and change their systems of meaning. These cues embedded in the design of the software help/constrain the way in which individuals define who they are and what they are doing, similarly to some degree to the way physical buildings affect how occupants feel and think.

As much as our physical environment plays a significant role in the development of our identity and perception of others, electronic artefacts provide a structure of a potential organisation of social interactions. This structure includes elements like individuals, learning activities, communication system, distributed "spatial" arrangements, time arrangements, pedagogical models, and software design.

The idea of transaction between individuals and electronic artefacts borrowed from symbolic interactionism can help us think of social interactions as signs of complex environmental influences. Indeed, the relationships encompassed by the symbolic approach to electronic environment can help draw out some key features of the social systems that computers and networks claim to enable by understanding the way in which individuals perceive the capabilities of computers and networks as media of communicating and interacting, and the significance that the use of computers and networks has for them.

The Concept of Affordances for Sociability

In this article, we focus on the possibilities offered by the electronic artefact for meaningful social interaction. These possibilities are affordances (Gibson, 1979), which we intend here as mechanisms that can support socialisation needs and are enabled by the medium. Socialisation needs are human and hence media independent, but affordances are closely connected to specific media [START_REF] Hollan | Beyond being there[END_REF].

As stated by [START_REF] Gaver | Affordances for interaction: The social is material for design[END_REF], affordances for sociability are properties of the environment that affect peoples' interaction. They should not be simply perceivable, but factual and establish a clear relationship between action and interaction. Unfortunately, affordances for sociability in the electronic medium may not be perceived as easily as face-to-face. Relationships are implicit, students need make them explicit through dialogue

It is clear that the traditional classroom is a more "socially translucent system" since it provides "perceptually-based social cues which afford awareness and accountability" [START_REF] Erickson | Socially translucent systems: Social proxies, persistent conversation, and the design of `Babble[END_REF].

In this system it is easier for learners to engage in informal conversations, observe and imitate other's actions, exert peer pressure, and create, notice and conform to social norms. As [START_REF] Erickson | Socially translucent systems: Social proxies, persistent conversation, and the design of `Babble[END_REF] pointed out, this social translucency is a requirement for supporting communication and collaboration.

Unfortunately, we lose this social translucency in the virtual space. We are more socially blind in the electronic medium and the need arises for exploring ways of delivering socially salient information in the human computer interfaces. The task is challenging, however, as many important affordances for sociability in face to face are peripheral and unspoken, such as eye contact, body posture, the way we dress, etc. In addition to these mechanisms, a number of physical socialisation structures support "tacitly" the learning process and are also crucial, such as the buildings, the course plan, the schedule, the physical gatherings and so on (Dirckinck-Holmfeld and [START_REF] Dirckinck-Holmfeld | Distributed computer supported collaborative learning through shared practice and social participation[END_REF].

All these elements deeply influence social behaviour but they are not easily captured by theories and thus embedded in design (Gaver, 1999.) Gaver also stated that simplistic social theories used in communication software design and malleability of technology contribute to support a vast range of behaviours, but make none obvious. This lack of general patterns does not help individuals anticipate expected or unwanted social behaviours, and may cause them a sense of loss of control that makes them insecure, as they often cannot use the knowledge of relation and navigation they are bodily familiar with in the real world [START_REF] Sorensen | Metaphors and the design of the human interface[END_REF]. This sense of insecurity would not promote motivation to remain and engage in the learning experience.

Therefore we argue that this situation requires participants to engage in a process of re-creation of meanings to cope with the involved uncertainties and not rely on a passive process of simple acknowledgment of the new place.

THE ELECTRONIC MEDIUM AS A PLAYGROUND

In 2001, one of the authors participated in a project group (as a student), where the group created a virtual group room at www.igroups.dk (a free general purpose community service). The project was based on problem oriented project pedagogy (POPP) [START_REF] Dirckinck-Holmfeld | Designing virtual learning environments based on problem oriented project pedagogy. I n Dirckinck-Holmfeld[END_REF], lasted throughout a semester and was heavily mediated by the virtual group room, although the group met frequently face-to-face. Two central features of Igroups will be analyzed and discussed in this article: a mini-game and the file space.

The game, called "Bubblez", became an important social artefact for the group. A friendly (but fierce) competition arose among the members who strived to make the highest score. The high-score list became a frequent topic of discussion both in the virtual forums and in face-to-face meetings, and the members engaged in writing fictional sports articles containing interviews with themselves, describing their own way to the top, and the reasons for the former champion's defeat; friendly chat sessions or e-mails were initiated solely to mock the others and point their attention to a newly attained 1 st place.

As a primary artefact, a game is not productive in the sense as e.g. an axe; rather the product of a game is "fun" or "relaxation" for the individual player. However, the game also became a secondary artefact as the game entered the shared repertoire and initiated a discourse based on friendly competition that was sustained and constantly negotiated throughout the project. The game became a mode of belonging, participating and affirming membership in the virtual group. Although the game in a sense was counter-productive, considered that it took time away from writing the project, it was at the same time very productive in sustaining and constantly renewing a social practice. In part, the game also became a tertiary artefact for construction of imaginative and fictional 'articles', which functioned as a creative writer's playground far from ordinary academic language and discourse.

The file space was used to share documents so all members could download, edit and comment on each others work. An interesting aspect of the file space was the amount of time put into negotiations on how to use it. Over time the file space had to be re-furnished and re-organized as to meet changing demands in the work process. These reorganisations were collaborative efforts discussed in the forums and face-to-face meetings. The file space was an important part of coordinating the work process and also came to be a shared reference on the progress and structure of the project itself, as the organization of the file space was tightly interwoven with the temporal order and the conceptual interdependence of the individual chapters. The file space, however, was badly designed for some purposes as it solely sorted files and folders alphabetically/numerically, therefore the group had to put some effort into naming files and folders with initial numbers as to assimilate to and circumvent the systems functioning.

As a primary artefact the file space was a crucial tool to share, download and upload documents, but it also included a secondary level as it became the centre of negotiations on its own use and gradually came to be a representation of the project's progress. In this vein, it turned out to become a social artefact as the constant re-furnishing and regrouping of the files involved all members negotiating rules on how to name files and folders. One could say that the rationale built into the system forced the group to a creative re-organisation of practice, as the file sorting mechanism did not fit the group's need. However, it highlighted the need for the group to organize meaningfully the files in accordance with the progress of their project and their own negotiated rules, and not according to the technical rationale embedded in the system. We believe that the need of learners to structure their learning environment is not only necessary to the work process of the learners, but also is an important part of socialization, as the learners need to mutually attune and negotiate the use of the technological environment. This , in turn, is a crucial process in making sense of where and who we are in the electronic medium.

SOME REFLECTIONS ON IMPLICATIONS FOR DESIGN

Our analysis leads us to suggest that it is difficult to speak of networked learning environments as realities that confront learners in the same way as physical educational environments do.

The notion of place is more problematic in the electronic medium: it is not given and self-evident as physical settings. It is not just "out there" for people to go and learn about it. The lack of predefined social systems of meanings in and the opaqueness of the electronic environment requires individuals to build their own personal and collective systems of meanings, which is the basis for the development of identity and social awareness. We create personal meanings of our reality by interacting with one another. What does this construction of personal meanings imply for networkbased learning environments? In our opinion, it implies that designers should take into account this process of coevolution encompassing learners, their role of sense makers and active producers of social reality, and the electronic place, when they develop their models of potential ecologies.

As earlier said, we do not mean to list a range of social artefacts; rather we mean to present some analytical concepts in order to point out that the production and use of a variety of artefacts is an intrinsic aspect of learning. These notions suggest that we should not think of learners as passive recipients or assimilators of the environment, but rather as very active constructors of artefacts and meaning, which, in turn, is a necessary part of the learning process. This way of thinking emphasizes that an important part of designing learning environments is to design for participation and engagement of the learners and enabling them to create their learning environment.

We believe that a virtual place must be constructed to large extent by those who are supposed to use it, and we question the idea of a fixed concept of user, on one side, and electronic medium, on the other side, since it excludes human explicit and implicit goals and does not take into account the needs of learners to re-structure and re-negotiate the learning environment. As Gaver (1991) stated, culture, experience, and intentions intermingle in the user-system interaction and this contributes to the definition and construction of "place". The idea is not just simply adding features to the electronic medium, but to understand the individual and collaborative exploratory context, in which subjects and artefacts are coupled and not disjointed. We can argue that the intuitive approach to some extent comes from the perspective of the artefact as a playground, in which people engage in a range of relationships, and not only exchange information but also emotions.

Figure 1 :

 1 Figure 1: Different affordances in the traditional classroom and the networked learning environment.

Figure 2 :

 2 Figure 2: Two screen shots from "Bubblez".


Mircea Giurgiu
email: mircea.giurgiu@com.utcluj.ro

ICT COMPETENCES ACQUISITION USING THE CONCORDE E-LEARNING PLATFORM

Keywords:

This communication presents some of the final results obtained in the frame of the EC funded Leonardo da Vinci pilot project with the title "Acquisition of Complementary Competencies through Open and Distance Education" (CONCORDE) and it complements other dissemination papers. Mainly, we focus here on the acquisition of the competences in the information and communication technologies using an innovative pedagogical model implemented at the level of the web platform. The targeted competences respond to the training needs identified in the first stage of the project. A web platform developed at Technical University of Cluj supports on-line training material organisation via web interfaces and open access to training resources through personalized interfaces. Evaluation tools, additional training resources and communication facilities, such as forum, are an integral part of this electronic platform. Some of these final results are outlined and disseminated in this communication.

I. INTRODUCTION

To be successful in the European economy, the workforce must have up-to-date vocational skills relevant to the needs of employers. Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) can provide a flexible and convenient solution to the constraints of time, cost and access to training. Similarly people with outdated or inadequate skills can find difficulties to re-enter the labour market. Knowledge acquired in the formal education system, on the job or in a more informal way, is the key for everyone to controlling their future and their personal development.

Based on a training need analysis survey realized by seven partners at European level in what concerns ecompetences, a training network is functional now and it is able to offer informal education in the areas corresponding to the partners' background: business administration, information technologies (ICT skills at basic and high level), plastic materials. The approach implements an e-Learning-based model which consists of the following key elements: definition of an informal training network that is trainee centred, the application of "learning by doing" principle when developing and studying the training material, flexible and customisable delivery of content, technological implementation of an pedagogical model based on spiral development of educational material (planning, implementation, evaluation), a web-based platform that supports both on-line content creation and running of learning campaigns [START_REF] Giurgiu | Acquisition of Complementary Competencies through Open and Distance Education -1. Analysis of Training Needs[END_REF] [START_REF] Giurgiu | A Survey on Training Needs Analysis as Complementary Competencies Acquired through Open and Distance Education[END_REF].

The pedagogical innovations refer to different aspects related with: training network definition, criteria to develop educational materials suited to informal learning, a specific model for creation and management of materials which considers an on-line assistant, establishment of quality evaluation criteria.

From the technological point of view a web-based platform has been developed and it offers a set of complex tools for content creation and management, running training campaigns, allow self-learning and collaborative learning. The training material was developed to assist trainees in acquiring practical skills needed for complementary competencies and for employment purposes. It allows self-paced learning in a flexible way.

The acquisition of ICT skills is addressed with respect of life long acquisition of competences through informal learning and they are related with the use of ICT to help individuals to enforce their capacity of knowledge development, to increase their adaptability to new market situations, to allow in-service education and to enhance the learning situation in an integrated approach as presented [3][4].

The project addresses its results to a broad category of people in order to improve their skills and to pilot innovative technological experiences in using Open Distance Learning (ODL) materials on a web platform. The main target groups are: The pedagogical model (Figure 1) is technologically integrated on the web platform and the its main features are as follows:

• • • • • • • • people that need
• acquisition of competences in a constructivist paradigm

• the model assumes a cyclical process in a spiral approach

• stages: planning, implementation and evaluation

• training for future working opportunities

• promotion of active attitude, responsibility and interactivity

• educational environment depends on the technological settings

• both expert-learner evaluation for adaptation and quality control To ensure the quality of the pedagogical model, a set of 10 "tips" have been adopted for quality control just from the designing of course content: 1) to establish concrete objectives, 2) to define criteria for evaluation, 3) to design a case of real life for problem solving, 4) to present strategies and recommend steps to solve the tasks, 5) each objective should be mirrored in a set of learning activities and tasks, 6) difficult tasks are divided in subtasks, 7) utilize contextual help (documents, tools, suggestions, readings, consultation, etc), 8) the format of the material could be text, glossaries, video,<audio, animations, simulations, etc., 9) promote collaborative tasks and stimulate communication, 10) respect authors rights and intellectual property rights [START_REF] Giurgiu | Multimedia Materials for Acquisition of Complementary Competencies through Open and Distance Learning in CONCORDE Project[END_REF].

The main characteristics of the web platform (www.concorde.utcluj.ro) are:

A) A web platform for competence acquisition

• training materials in:

B) Modelling and formalizing the content through an automated assistant

• an integrated approach for creation of materials and e-Learning platform (Figure 2)

• a customizable on-line wizard for generation of content and training situations

• integration of the pedagogical into the technological support

• required competences are covered by a sequence of training modules (Figure 3)

• each module comes with: training units,additional resources, assessment (Figure 3)

• integrated tools for quality control and analysis of training progress (Figure 5)

• continuous and on-line adaptation of materials and quality improvement Business Administration: An introduction to costing and pricing, Selling -a professional approach, Basics of management, Introduction in Marketing, The business plan, e-Commerce.

Multimedia: Speech compression for multimedia.

V. CONCLUSIONS

The acquisition of ICT skills is based on an approach that implements an e-Learning-based model consisting in the following key elements: definition of an informal training network that is trainee centred, the application of "learning by doing" principle when developing and studying the training material, flexible and customisable delivery of content, technological implementation of an pedagogical model based on spiral development of educational material (planning, implementation, evaluation), a web-based platform that supports both on-line content creation and running of learning campaigns. From technological point of view, the web platform allows a great flexibility in on-line material uploading via automated assistants for: modules creation, on-line evaluation instrument, statistics, communications tools, etc. All these tools are easy to use both from student and trainer part and allow flexible and personalised acquisition of competences.

  various competences, different from those of the field they were trained or to update the current skills to new market situations students and graduates needing complementary skills, especially those related with digital competences or Internet Technologies unemployed or disadvantaged people managers and clerical staff people from plastic industry administrative and docent personnel from schools workers from SMEs people from public administration III. PEDAGOGICAL MODEL AND THE WEB PLATFORM

Figure 1 .

 1 Figure 1. The pedagogical model in "CONCORDE"

Figure 2 .Figure 4 .

 24 Figure 2. Modelling the content of the modules Figure 3. Practical implementation of the study model

  Information Technologies at basic and high level, Business Administration and

	Plastic Materials
	• several ICT-based support components: educational management, educational support, statistics and
	control, communication center, resources
	• automated on-line wizards for: course, modules and unit management, assessment instruments via
	computer assisted questionnaires
	• time planning of the material delivery
	• databases with training material, users progress and general resources [4]


Mircea Giurgiu
email: mircea.giurgiu@com.utcluj.ro

TECHNICAL SOLUTIONS FOR ONLINE EDUCATIONAL SERVICES IN OCTOPUS RESOURCE CENTRE

Keywords: online resource centre, Octopus project, e-Learning

This paper presents technical solutions, which implements a new model for creation of online educational resources and associated e-Learning activities on a web platform aimed to support training on environmental field. The innovative pedagogical model has been technologically implemented as a dynamic system, able to offer the following educational services: online creation of the contents and of the self-learning activities, resources uploading according to a classification tree, personalised access to educational material, advanced tools for information retrieval, communication tools to facilitate collaborative training, facilities to support multilingual information presentation. The adopted technical solutions fits into the pedagogical model and their presentation will reflect the conceptual and architectural design as well as several specific functionalities.

I. THE FRAME OF OCTOPUS RESOURCE CENTRE

The Socrates/Minerva Project "Octopus: Transnational online resource centre" (www.octopus-eu.org) is an educational and knowledge repository in the multidisciplinary and multicultural area of environment training.

One of the main concerns in the implementation of this platform was that Octopus resource centre would not be just a list of articles and links to other web sites or references to external resources like CDs or bibliographical lists. For this system was required that it would allow the creation and hosting of its own resources. To achieve this, a set of management software tools has been developed in order to handle different kind of resources such as: simple texts, complex documents, images, sounds and videos, so giving to the resource centre an effective multimedia capacity. More, the concept has been extended to aspects relating with interchange of information among users, in order to let them permanently connected to such valuable information as well as for expanding their interaction possibilities as learners and as humans. For this, the platform is developed in six different languages: English, Portuguese, Spanish, Romanian, Italian and Greek, corresponding to the origin of the project partners and all these languages are available online. This facility is embedding the intercultural aspect, which is very important on this platform [START_REF] Carioca | OCTOPUS -Transnational On-Line Resource Centre, a Proposal in the Domain of Environmental Education[END_REF] [START_REF] Giurgiu | Creation of On-Line Resources for Environmental Education in OCTOPUS Project[END_REF].

Another important concern, reflected in the technical implementation, is the usability for a large category of users starting from simple users accessing only for information the site, up to high specialised people, which are contributing with their own resources and share information and knowledge with other colleagues. In this sense, the users have been classified on different knowledge levels and with different technical skills, so the information is personalised for each user. The management structure allows to add, to modify or to delete resources, so the technical solution doesn't limit the growth of the information. For this reason, this approach is an "open end" solution, as it ensures the development and sustainability of the resource centre behind the end of the project.

The main technical proposals at the beginning of Octopus project are identified in the following perspectives: a) the organization and display of information, b) the way the options work and are integrated with others c) the basic architectural structure to be used.

After the development of alpha version a usability test has been done in all the countries involved in the project to evaluate the organisation and display of information [3][4]. We arrived to a screen layout, where the spaces are supposed to be different rooms, where each kind of information is grouped. Like this some basic "rooms" were defined as: Reception room, related to the attendance of the users; to Learn room, where users can access to Octopus resources; Lab, where the users with high level permissions can build and change the information related with the resources; Search, where the different ways of making the search were grouped. In spite of this kind of organization some of the options could be more hidden than expected. For this reason, it was necessary to bring alternatives with bigger visibility. Te left side of the screen was used for that, allowing the system to put there the desired options (Figure 1). The adoption of this kind of organization allowed a great flexibility simultaneously with the growing of the resources centre and of the options displayed to the users.

To assure the working of the resource centre with different languages simultaneously, the administrative structure couldn't be high hierarchic and with several levels of decision. To avoid this problem Octopus has a shared administration with each partner as an administrator. This allows a quicker updating of information. It was our permanent concern the integrity of information, because of using different tools and working styles in creation and editing of information. This could bring to the users different formats and styles that would confuse them and make them to feel uncomfortable in using this site. So, it was developed a set of tools able to generate a standard format for all learning sequences. The submission of the information to Octopus in this way, would obey to an adoption of a unique tool, an editor with characteristics and working like the well-known instrument: "Microsoft Word". Many aspects that are basic to Octopus development are supported in a cooperative way of work needed to assure its growing and development. Based in this idea, Octopus allows the registration and identification of the users. The Octopus hasn't restrictions in using and exploring by the unregistered users. We wanted to have means and mechanisms to allow that information consuming users could be more participative and become creators of information in a cooperative philosophy of work [START_REF] Carioca | OCTOPUS: An Approach for Transnational On-Line Resource Centre[END_REF][6].

II. THE MAIN TECHNICAL SOLUTIONS

The basic functional architecture of the application is presented in Figure 2. It consists of two major parts: server side, which hosts the web pages and the Octopus databases, and client side accessible through the web browser.

For the server side, taking into consideration the main features to implement, in the kind of services to bring to users, in the degree of needed interaction and in the dynamic generation of contents, our option was made to the platform LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySql, Php), as the technological base to develop the Octopus project. This decision was made based in its robustness, flexibility and scalability, also as the lowest costs. The Apache server allows responding to the browser requests when a user demands to see an Internet page using the HTTP (Hyper Text Transfer Protocol) communication protocol. This protocol has a specific language that assures the connection and change of information between server and clients in Web environment. The Apache server is the most used in the entire world, according to an all world study from the Netcraft entity with 64% of web site all over the world using this software. Some security mechanisms are also assured by the using of this server. Having Octopus Resource centre a great dynamic, in the management of all the information, related with menus, graphics, users administration and others, all the information must be registered in a non-volatile database. The chosen system to do that was MySql, also a public licence software project, having all the characteristics needed as easiness of managing, security in maintain data integrity and accessed protection. The Octopus system must have intelligent mechanisms that respond to users interactions and their functional and informational dynamics. With these demands the HTML, doesn't have the power to do it, because it just describes the displaying of the information and doesn't do its manipulation. To solve these problems it was decided to use the PHP language as the tool for the computer programming. This language, also a public licence one, can be used for different purposes and is good for web developing uses.

For the client side the tasks are more volatile and are based on the principle that they should free the server by additional processing and to avoid loss of time for Internet communication. So, the Javascript language and Java were Figure 3. JavaScript generates the tree of contents used to support the local processing tasks and the user interaction with the graphic objects of the interface. Also, CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) was used to standardize the appearance of documents. Using the table of contents, as an example (Figure 3), we can see that all the items are kept in data structures present in the memory of the local computer.

When the user chooses a new menu option that is connected with another sub-menu, an internal event is generated and managed by the JavaScript programming, which obtains from the data structure the list of items from the selected menu and generates a graphic box with the displayed options. Java applets have been used for the online editing of educational documents. The development of such editor supposed a great challenge, because they have added difficulties comparing with off-line versions. It is caused by applets action restrictions in assuring security to the users that charge them in browser (reading files from local disk, copy/paste actions and the access to restricted properties from the system). To solve these problems the technique of signed applets was used which allow adding a digital signature identifying the author and allowing the users to accept or not the added privileges that the applet provides. Each one of the functionalities the editors have, like the table management, must have an associated description of the HTML elements [6].

This characteristic obliges that all the graphic and visual elements should be mapped in their own HTML elements. This operation is based on a parser (a syntax and lexical analyser) and on a loader, which allows presenting the structure into the corresponding HTML document to be saved (Figure 4 is the visual document and Figure 5 is the generated HTML document).

In the previous versions of the document and learning sequences editor we had some difficulties in saving the learning sequences, which were built with some sub-projects and when were created in computers inside of institutional networks, controlled by routers and proxies. To solve this problem we had to use another server based in technology XML/RPC (eXtendable Markup Language/Remote Procedure Call) that have the function of receiving HTTP requests from browsers sent by applets or JavaScript code. These requests have the information about the tasks that should be done inside the server, like activate PHP scripts to access and write in the database [6].

III. EDUCATIONAL SERVICES FOR CREATION OF E-CONTENT AND FOR SELF-LEARNING

An important technical feature of this resource centre is the possibility to change at any moment the structure of the contents tree. For this, the empowered administrator can add more topics in the main branch or add subtopics in the tree of contents. Figure 6 presents the administration interface for creation of the contents tree where the resources will be further classified using specific forms that contain metadata descriptors. Metadata descriptors will help in the information retrieval process, in order to present to the user the required educational resources. The technical solution offers flexibility in items creation. Also, it is dynamic and can be easily adapted to other disciplines, such as Geography, Biology , Telecommunications, etc.

For information retrieval four types of search were defined and further implemented. The so-called search, the simplest, is just an introduction of a sentence in a field that verifies its occurrence. The Advanced Search uses more than a description sentence and it could be used in several fields such as: author, organization, date of resource creation, person who published the resource (example is given in Figure 7). Metasearch is the most complex, because the user can build his own search, choosing the fields where he wants the search to apply. This mechanism allows the user to build a search using a composition between fields and logical operators. The fourth one is the Directory Search, which uses the structure of the Octopus table of contents to select its elements where the search will act [6]. A self-learning activity could be a test that includes solutions after the resolution. An interactive-learning activity could be a forum by mailing about a topic or to exchange photos about the pollution. The schematic formalisation for the creation of self-learning sequences has been presented in several dissemination papers [START_REF] Carioca | OCTOPUS: An Approach for Transnational On-Line Resource Centre[END_REF][6]. The project is decomposed into sub-projects, each identified by a specific goal. The goal may be accomplished by: a) active participation: searching data in the centre, documentation and analyses, experimentations using specific procedures described by the sequence creator; b) informative activities; c) communicative for collaborative learning, such as mailing lists, forum or chat, all realised at different levels: virtual, in the filed or in the classroom [START_REF] Medina Rivilla | Center of Resources Octopus in Environment Education -Pedagogic Reference: Sequence of Learning[END_REF].

The above-mentioned formalism is embedded into a technical solution. The technical solution considers the implementation of an online editor. In the Octopus Resource Centre there are simple resources, which have been submitted without concerns about the use it will have and other kind of resources, which are destined to promote learning. Each of these learning sequences has to work as a little project, where some tasks are asked to the users do, and they need to explore a list of selected resources (from Octopus, from internet or other) based on a specific problem or content. The editor is enough flexible to allow that creation process by several steps: definition of the basic structure of the self-learning sequence (Figure 8), using online editor to create the content and to define the specific activities together with the evaluation procedures and communicative tasks (Figure 9), possible insertion in the new document of some existing resources from the Octopus centre (Figure 10) as material for reflexion and analysis, uploading the new educational resource and its classification in order to be easily retrieved (Figure 11). This process of new resources creation may take some time, because it is a very complex activity both scientifical and pedagogical, so the user has the possibility to work for a longer period of time on the document making it available on the web only when it is finalized.

IV. MULTILINGUAL INTERFACES AND INTERNATIONALISATION OF OCTOPUS

It was already presented in a previous section how Octopus resource centre works with several languages and the need for a correct use. This way of working doesn't solve all the problems concerned with the uses of different languages. The internationalization process had to be assumed in a more global way for any language. The global approach of this problem allowed to identify three distinct areas. These areas are: a) information area (all options and the menus), b) the contents area, concerning the documents and c) the code (messages embedded in the programming code of the site).

The translation of the information area was possible by the use of menu editor system as was presented before. The translation of the contents has been approached in two different perspectives. In the case of written documents the translation was done using the document editor, which is the common tool with the high level permission. Concerning the high diversity of resources submitted to the resource centre it was defined that each author has the power to decide which language will be used for the creation of the resource. Knowing that this would cause the existence of many resources just in native language, the concern was to have a common identification base. This was done using two obligatory registration fields: one to mark the language of the resource, the other is the description in English. This procedure allowed a common base to broadcast the information about the submitted resources (e.g. in the News section, where recent resources are automatically cited) and to help the search process, as language is an important item for this activity [6].

In case of programming code the translation process was more complex, because the programmer couldn't reply each code section in a different language. It would be an enormous work, almost impossible to assure the information integrity. So, the solution was to make the identification and marking of all the sentences containing warnings and messages embedded in code. After this, it was developed a translation program that creates a list with the messages found in the programming code. This program was sent to the partners with the list of sentences in English, so they could make the translation. The translated lists in each language have been imported to a correspondent file that makes the translation to the selected language. The program that allows the partners to do the translation tasks was built in C++. This process had some problems related with the Greek translations, which has very special characteristics in the definition of its characters as the codification is different from the other western languages [START_REF] Chouriço | Octopus Resource Centre -Requirements and Technical Solutions[END_REF]. The Octopus Resource Centre is a web platform that is the result of a good balance between the initial idea, the need of identifying the requirements of the project and the identification of needed technologies to have results. In spite of many conditionings in the development process the final result is very promising, because it allows different perspectives of work, usage and a big increase of information in terms of submitted educational resources.

After two years of intense work the technical limitations are surely the least important, as the existing tools and the great flexibility of Octopus site are the result of a great concern with the final user: not only the information consumer, but also the authors of training materials in the environmental area. The problems became challenges that obliged to make difficult and risky options and finally to have opportunities to open new research and implementation areas.

The Octopus resource centre became a great and complex amount of programming comparable with some institutional sites as banks. It was possible with relatively few means and many creativity to have an Internet site very powerful, very complex, but mainly very flexible, that we can say without many presumption, a mark in the development of online resource centres.

Figure 1 .Figure 2 .

 12 Figure 1. The main page of Octopus web platform

Figure 6 .Figure 7 .Figure 8 .

 678 Figure 6. Online creation of contents tree

Figure 12 .

 12 Figure 12. Example of multilingual interfaces for the Menu Editor (in Romanian and Italian)


Vito J Carioca
email: vcarioca@eseb.ipbeja.pt

TECHNOLOGICAL MODEL FOR ONLINE RESOURCE CENTRE IN ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION

Keywords: Resource centre online, environment education, e-Learning

The communication focuses on the implementation of an innovative model for creation of online resources and e-learning activities on a web platform dedicated to environmental education. All activities take place in the frame of Minerva project OCTOPUS: "Transnational on-line resource centre". The resource centre implements a mechanism of multilevel knowledge development and information retrieval system using modern electronic tools. This model is dynamic by its technological structure and also from the following perspectives: the resources are dynamically generated, the structure could be easily adapted to other areas, the training resources could be re-used and combined for complex training situations.

INTRODUCTION

The development of an on-line knowledge and training repository together with the associated learning facilities in the multidisciplinary and multicultural area of environment education is the principal aim of the Socrates/Minerva project: OCTOPUS -"Transnational on-line resource centre". Carioca et al. (2002 a) presented the outcomes of this dynamic and content adaptive virtual library: creation of the resource centre of didactic materials as a knowledge pool, creation and customisation of databases in transnational environmental education, production of adequate interfaces for different levels of users and different cultures, searching and evaluation of the resources, creation of complex learning sequences, creation of a virtual space for documentation, interactive learning of a large category of users with different cultural profiles.

In this implementation, the educational model considers two major components which are interconnected by ICT tools: a) one related with the deployment of a very well organized dynamic database which acts as an on-line resource centre uploaded and searched using metadata descriptors as suggested by [START_REF] Norman | Things that make us smart: defending human attributes in the age of the machine[END_REF], and b) one targeting a technological formalisation of new concepts of pedagogical approach for self-training need adapted both for trainers and trainees as described by [START_REF] Carioca | OCTOPUS Project: from alfa to beta version[END_REF].

For the organisation and upload of resources a standardized version of metadata descriptors are used. This information characterise the origin of the resource in terms of: creator, provider, description, best practices, learning recommendations and it is adapted to the purposes of environmental education. A set of technical tools is currently available for: content tree organisation, information upload, resource management, search and classification, suggestions for learning possibilities, statistics and communication. The e-Learning possibilities are oriented to learners and teachers in an open and personalized manner. The teaching-learning process is autonomous, collaborative and it is essentially a socio-communicational and technological one based on the next criteria: a) sequential organisation of information, processes and training keys, b) e-Learning tasks promote both self-learning and teamwork, c) evaluation by means of progressive ways and integral perspective.

CREATION OF ON-LINE RESOURCES

For the organisation and upload of the resource a standardized version of metadata descriptors proposed by Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI) has been adapted for project purposes to the environmental education. Metadata is descriptive information about an object or resource whether it is physical or electronic.

One very important technical feature of this resource centre is the possibility to change at any moment the structure of the content tree. For this, the empowered administrator can add more topics in the main branch or add subtopics in the tree of contents. Figure 1 presents the administration interface for creation of the contents tree. The technical solution offers flexibility in items creation. Also, it is dynamic and can be easily adapted to other areas, such as Geography, Biology, etc. Figure 2 presents how the main chapters of the resource centre may be deeply described: maximum three levels are allowed. The conclusion is that the technical infrastructure of the resource centre can be adapted to other areas and can be dynamically updated. For resource uploading there is a form available on the web, as seen in Figures 3 and it is designed to tag the training material with metadata descriptors. At this moment a number of more than 2000 documents have been uploaded and this number will substantially increase until the end of the project. The form includes in its structure cultural aspects, too, such as: language of the resource, the cultural level required to understand the resource, description of possible intercultural interactivities. The intercultural approach is schematic represented in Figure 4 in order to relate different components in a single and unified vision, which has been recommended to be followed by the content creators in the process of uploading the electronic resources on the web platform.

THE PEDAGOGICAL MODEL

The approach is oriented to learners and teachers. Any person that visits the resource centre may be interested to learn more about a topic using a specific resource. The proposal for training is to be open and directed. There is a need to synthesise and complete the different knowledge, valuations, and actuations that are required to base the environmental knowledge and the improvement and integration of the diverse knowledge of subjects in order to create a typology for the learning sequences.

As it is designed, the on-line network is an "ecosystem" that facilitates the interaction and opening of people. The teaching-learning process has to be open, autonomous, and collaborative, as depicted in Figure 5. The on-line creative approach is going to promote the whole knowledge and opening, involving the students in a personal project with other people. The opening has to invite using and enjoying collaboratively all the Internet means. The limited use of restrictions has to stimulate the economical and democratic development of every person who could use it. The opening is real when students and teachers decide to use it freely and autonomously. The active learning allows searching the resource centre with advanced tools such as: quick search, advanced search (as in Figure 6), metasearch and directories search in order to adapt the data source to the needs of the environmental education.

Several pedagogical procedures are proposed for acquisition of the concepts: a) assimilation (present basic concepts of environment protection and relate them with previous concepts, knowledge and experiences), b) accommodation (adjust previous concepts to the new ones and realise the dimensions of the problem), c) interiorisation (stimulate personal learning achievements), d) bring new ideas (give a personal solution for an environmental issue), e) present personal observations for environment disasters, sustainable development, exchange documents (photos, videos) on a specific theme; f) active participation in solving environmental problems: give solutions to improve the health of environment, elaborate plans and cooperate with others for putting them in practice. These procedures are included in a broader pedagogical scheme that takes into account: working in the class, analyses in the camp, using the resource centre and finally evaluation.

Working in class supposes to use several existing documents from the resource centre for: a) analysis the facts: characteristics of the problem, description of the processes, presentation of images, rough evaluation of consequences; b) interiorise the values: compromise with economic activities, development of intercultural values, scenarios for improvement; c) attitudes: realise the ecologic transformations, implications at regional and global scales.

The direct analyses on the camp are focussing on: guided visits, realisation of documentation, photos, description of the degradation processes, identification of problems, degradation of flora and fauna, experiment ideas, elaborate scenarios, collect the facts, how decision factors may be involved in solving the ecologic problem.

The resource centre is used to: understand the problem, adjust the learning process according to the own rhythm and necessities, facilitate personalisation, realise and active learning, adaptation of the problem to the users, creation of an training agenda, create satisfaction to the user, assessing and encouraging the user.

The evaluation follows the concepts: estimation of actual level of knowledge, analyse the interiorisation process of problems and facts, estimate the vocabulary for describing ecology and ways to improve the quality of environment, analysis of abilities to realize the risks, assess the open tasks.

CREATION OF E-LEARNING SEQUENCES

Starting from an on-line perspective, the learning-training model has to be essentially a sociocommunicational and technological one. The activities can be oriented to the self-learning or to interactive-learning. The self-learning activities are based on the autonomy capacity of the learner. With the interactive approach, we ask to exchange information, ideas, or results between learners or between learners and trainers.

A self-learning activity could be a test that includes solutions after the resolution. An interactive-learning activity could be a forum by mailing about a topic or to exchange photos about the pollution. In Figure 7 is presented the schematic formalisation of the creation of a self-learning sequence that involves documentation in the resource centre and specific activities distributed over a time period. The project is decomposed into sub-projects, each identified by a specific goal. The goal may be accomplished by: a) active participation: searching data in the centre, documentation and analyses, experimentations using specific procedures described by the sequence creator; b) informative activities; c) communicative for collaborative learning, such as mailing lists, forum or chat, all realised at different levels: virtual, in the filed or in the classroom. This formalism is embedded into a technical solution.

The Figures 8,9, 10 and 11 present a sequence of screenshots describing activities how to transform salt water into potable water using Octopus resources.

Figure 1 .

 1 Figure 1. On-line creation of contents tree in Octopus Figure 2. Adding branches to the "Octopus" centre

Figure 7 .

 7 Figure 7. The model adopted for technical implementation of e-learning sequences

CONCLUSIONS

Creation of on-line resources and knowledge development in the area of environmental education is a complex task involving an interdisciplinary research and implementation efforts. The basis of scientific research and database uploading is the tree of contents together with the metadata descriptors. The educational proposal takes into account intercultural issues that reconsider the methodological aspects of the learning-training processes in order to allow people to build the knowledge by means of the on-line possibilities. Both, resources and learning facilities of the resource centre are the subject of continuous improvement and expansion, creating in this way a very dynamic dimension of interdisciplinary and intercultural knowledge pool over the web.


M Giurgiu
email: mircea.giurgiu@com.utcluj.ro

Competencies in virtual collaboration applied for students' online project management under industry conditions -the case of POOL (*)

Competencies in virtual collaboration applied for students'online project management under industry conditions -the case of POOL

Mircea Giurgiu

INTRODUCTION IN THE POOL PROJECT

One of the key-components in preparing students for the demands of the labour market is the project-based training. Nevertheless it is true and commonly agreed by personnel managers and recruiting agencies that team-working and problem-solving skills as well as communicative competence vitally contribute to the employability of university graduates [START_REF] Neumayer | Die IKT-Stellenmarktanalyse des ZBW[END_REF]. Such developments are not yet well integrated in the curricula of the educational institutions. This raises relevant questions that need to be addressed if students should be adequately prepared to meet the challenges in their future workplaces, where international collaboration in a distributed setting has become the norm [START_REF] Robert | Monitoring Informationswirtschaft[END_REF] [START_REF]IKT-SKILLS Herausforderungen and Chancen im Bereich der Informations und ommunikationstechnologien[END_REF].

The POOL ("Project Organisation OnLine as a model of equipping engineering students with team-working and communicative competencies in a multinational setting using ICT") project undertakes to address these questions in a European context and provide a model for integrating distributed project management training into engineering curricula:

• What aspects need to be considered when preparing students to work in multinational online teams? • What European consensus can be achieved across national borders with respect to online project organisation, documentation and quality control? • What areas provide difficulties and why?

• What industry and real working life demands can be reflected in project training to ideally prepare students for the labour market?

The unique approach trialled in this project is the combination of a real-life university-industry project in combination with the critical reflection and evaluation of the curriculum. Theory and industry practice are thus synergetically utilised to achieve the most efficient and effective form of training for the engineering students. The student project serves as the touchstone for all questions to be addressed and considered. All communication as well as documentation is carried out in a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) that will enhance awareness of the sensitive issues involved in online project collaboration. EC curriculum guidelines [START_REF]EC curriculum guidelines[END_REF] emphasise the "… broad systems perspective … training in team working, with real experience of team projects where several activities are undertaken in parallel, good personal skills such as problem solving abilities, and awareness of cultural differences when acting in a global environment." This definitely calls for a reconsideration of the communicative and organisational framework in industry projects as well as the didactic and methodological approaches in the training in accordance with the curriculum guidelines. Whereas project-based learning has been widely accepted as a core methodology in initial university engineering education, its focus has mainly been on the acquisition of technical skills and has not fully considered the complex interplay of communicative, organisational and domain-specific aspects. This skills deficit is even more evident in a distributed and transnational setting, where communication is a crucial success factor.

The POOL project aims to achieve the following objectives:

• to provide a curriculum model for integrating practical project work into engineering curricula at university-level education using distance education

• to best prepare students to work in multi-skills and multinational teams in a distributed setting • to filter out and agree on a set of quality criteria for online project management training in university-level education based on current industry practices and taking into account expected future developments • to compare and evaluate practised national vocational/professional requirements/standards for project organisation and management in a distributed environment using distance education • to (re)assess the role of high-level academic education in preparing engineering students for professional project and team work • to (re)evaluate the curriculum development process through the active involvement of and dialogue between university-students-industry • to use and evaluate distance education and electronic communication in skills acquisition and knowledge building

THE PEDAGOGICAL APPROACH FOR CURRICULUM

The POOL project departs from existing curricula and industry projects carried out in the framework of university-level education and builds on the practices and expertise of its consortium partners. It acknowledges the feedback from industry partners and real-life workplace scenarios where project team work often involves transnational and virtual elements. It therefore extends current project management training by a transnational and a virtual component. The challenge lies in the integration of these new aspects into curriculum design so that the created modules reflect current industry practices and standards as well as future developments. This raises a number of issues that need to be addressed and evaluated in the conception of training modules [6][7]. The innovative methodological and didactic approach lies in the integration of practical and theoretical considerations utilising new forms of learning for hands-on-training and involving all affected stakeholders as reflected in the following aspects: i) the active involvement of the primary beneficiaries, the students and industry partners in curriculum development ii) the interaction of university-industry as a new model for knowledge transfer into the industry iii) the utilisation of forms of online learning and teaching in a distributed project environment iv) the combination with the practical field-trial of online project management in a real-life student-industry project: v) the consideration of advanced didactic and pedagogical methods: state-of-the art expertise on online projects as well as distance education are assessed and taken into account.

The underlying didactic methodology conforms to the latest developments that have been especially relevant for any online training. These include:

• adopting a moderate constructivist approach acknowledging learner learner self-organisation • providing stimulating learning situations considering the specific constrains/ potentials of the online medium • selecting a learner-centred organisational and communicative framework that enhances motivation • adopting a blended learning approach that will utilise both online and offline scenarios to their full potentials.

The curriculum design will use a skills-based approach to accommodate the special focus on work-orientation. More specifically, competency profiles are based on real-life tasks and reflect current work practices. The consultation and involvement of industry partners at the early stage of the needs analysis as well as in the final evaluation phase is a major guarantor for the appropriateness of the training units. The chosen approach reflects the findings and standardized procedures as provided in the ADDIE Model (Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, Evaluation) provided by IEEE Learning Technology Standards Committee [START_REF]ADDIE Model[END_REF]. The actual procedure is divided into the following steps: 1) needs analysis -the actual needs are determined and a set of job-related tasks are defined.

2) curriculum design -it focuses on the training approach, the definition of learning objectives and performance measures, and finally the design of a training plan 3) instructional development -a competency profile has been defined, which informs the creation of learning modules/units and the selection of supportive media and materials 4) curriculum implementation will be done in the form of university-industry student project 5) curriculum evaluation is based on the summative evaluation of the curriculum module testing within the pilot project and reviewed by the industry partners.

The pedagogic-didactic approach in the curriculum modules is based on quality-assured principles:

• active learner involvement • provision of stimulating learning situations • selecting a learner-centred organisational and communicative framework that enhances the motivation and provides the possibility for group interaction, community building and reflective learning possibilities • blended learning approach utilises both online and offline scenarios [START_REF] Kerres | A didactical framework for the design of blended learning arrangements[END_REF].

DEFINITION OF THE COMPETENCIES FOR VIRTUAL COLLABORATION IN PROJECT MANAGEMENT

To define the competency profile required to the engineering students for online project management under industry conditions, the following training dimensions have been carefully considered:

• training for virtual collaboration

• training for project planning and time management

• training for presentation and communication

• training for electronic project documentation

• training for intercultural communication In this paper we will present the identified competencies for virtual collaboration and for project planning. For each of them a description is given, together with three specific attributes. A more detailed description of such competencies will be given in the project handbook.

A. COMPETENCIES FOR VIRTUAL COLLABORATION

A.1. Appropriate use of Information and Communication

Technologies -handling Information and Communication Technologies in complex virtual collaborative projects is a core competence that allows to automate the management processes, to develop best project-oriented practices, to facilitate the communication, sharing of ideas and better understanding and analysis of the collaborative framework:

• knowledge on ICT application in virtual collaborative environments • skills in designing, setting-up and maintenance of technology-supported collaborative spaces • track the project activities and identify specific patterns for virtual collaboration A.2. Facilitate virtual collaboration -knowledge and skills required to understand the barriers in virtual collaboration and to create the conditions and premises for appropriate communication settings in various circumstances. Application of communication interventions and approaches to facilitate an efficient virtual collaboration.

• ability in understanding the composition of the group and the roles of each member during the hole process of a project • prove availability for online relationships and facilitate the collaboration by exploring different communicative interventions • know to use and to adapt communication strategies and approaches for virtual collaboration. A.3. Develop the project plan in a collaborative/distributed vision, maintaining professional and collegial relationshipsknowledge and skills to understand the roles, to feel as part of the group, to demonstrate the team values and to show the capacity to collaborate for the project plans agreed by all team members: • knowledge on efficient communication and collaboration practices in virtual frameworks • feeling of co-presence and aptitudes to engage for online communication, as part of a group • understanding the roles of the others as a context for the own role; demonstrate team values and respect. A.4. Develop and share the knowledge on virtual project management -to be able to explore ideas, to develop arguments, to know to value different sources of information and to proper classify them, to produce project-related knowledge and to know to share it in the virtual collaboration space:

• know various processes applied in online project management and be aware of the value of information reusing and adaptation • provision of access to own information and facilitation of cooperative working on shared resources • plan and implement shared resource creation of the project. A.5. Recognize diversity ensuring team cohesion by virtual collaborative means -to be aware of the different approaches and methodologies in working/communication that may be applied by the distributed teams, to understand such diversity and to self-organize/adapt using virtual collaborative means:

• ability to adapt to different collaboration styles and to encourage creative thinking by accepting the diversity • capacity to identify the collaborative interactions with the virtual space and its artefacts • improve online project management skills by working in multinational teams. A.6. Demonstrate effective interpersonal communication skills -to be competent in the evaluation of the communication requirements in the project, to be able to set-up specific ICT tools for communication:

• demonstrate ability to observe facts and to provide fast and accurate communication feed-back to the team members • practice active listening; make the team members to think and make them feel positively challenged

• develop and enhance the communication channels with the project team by using specific ICT tools. A.7. Manage virtual collaboration processes -show abilities and proficiencies in maping project planning into the virtual collaboration platform in order: to have full-control of project management, to be effective in project documentation and to solve possible technical problems using the community experiences:

• be able to match the project planning into the virtual collaboration framework and to document this process according to best practices management -project teams should be able to always estimate and redefine the scope and effort of project activities in both initial project plans and continuous progress reports that comprehensively show transparency of all project proceedings and time correspondence to team members: • understanding and measuring the objectives of the project and constant adaptation to changing project requirements, • transparency in distributed project proceedings and synchronisation of processes, • comprehensive and clear project statements, especially regarding synchronisation of work and times B.4. Adjustment to time differences -project managers should understand and incorporate differences in local work schedules of team members in the project planning process and transport those to all team members. Core Times for (synchronous) joint activities and an environment that supports the timely progress of the project should be defined:

• capacity to adapt the own time planning to time differences of the multinational teams. Finding and negotiating the "global time" on the most effective time adaptation according to the "local schedules"

• level of conformity to local work schedules and project time and work commitments • scheduling and synchronising distributed work. B.5. Adaptability of managerial skills -project managers should develop and leverage their knowledge of differences between distributed work groups (e.g. work attitudes, work schedules, motives, cultural backgrounds) in their leadership to achieve best time and work efficiency:

• cooperation and virtual collaboration in definition of the project tasks, resource planning, time planning and an unitary view in understanding the philosophy of the project and project documentation. They must make sure within the project team that work between the work groups will be synchronised where it is necessary • deliver joint outcomes resulting from sharing the same project planning and using the same quality evaluation criteria • reliable and confident collaboration and joint co-operation to achieve the outcomes. B.6. Common understanding -team members should support the creation of a common understanding and practice by definition of and commitment to a common terminology as well as work and time agreements:

• capacity to achieve a joint commitment in the virtual collaboration framework • ability to easily adapt and understand different practices and work arrangements project management • common understanding of and commitments to terms and arrangements B.7. Team awareness -team members of the project should build up a framework by means of formal and informal channels that enables them to capture and encourage a common team identity. Project managers should actively contribute to an environment that encourages such team identity and use this framework to coordinate the team effectively in a virtual team:

• ability to understand the team identity • effective collaboration and communication in team • proficiency for team awareness B.8. Modularity in methodology and techniques -project planners should understand how to flexibly select and deploy project management techniques in a distributed environment, regarding differences in complexity and requirements of the distributed enviroment:

• abilities to be aware of the effects and implications of a wide range of related techniques and methods in a distributed and virtual environment. • adaptation to changing international requirements of project planning and time management • optimisation of techniques and methods. The above described competencies in the categories virtual collaboration and project planning as well as competencies on: communication, project documentation and intercultural communication have been evaluated by the industry partners in the frame of an online survey. The interviewed companies have been asked to rank the relevance of each competency (for online project management) with "low", "medium" and "high". The results for virtual collaboration and project planning are given bellow and it can be seen that most of the competencies have been ranked as with "high relevance" in percentages higher than 50% as the "low relevance" is in average under 10%.

CONCLUSIONS

The results of a research survey for the identification of the competency profile required to train engineering students in online project management under industry conditions and in the frame of a multinational cooperation have been presented.

The training profile is a multidimensional one, considering the structuring of the competencies in several classes. The survey made among the industry partners aimed to check the validity of the identified competencies as well as to anchor the results into the state of the art of the labour market and into the current industry practices. Starting from these types of competencies, the curriculum and the training handbook will be developed in the near future.