Dr Thrasyvoulos Tsiatsos
email: tsiatsos@csd.auth.gr

Andreas Konstantinidis

Konstantinidis Andreas

Exploitation of Croquet CVE Platform for supporting Collaborative e-Learning Environments

Keywords: Tele-learning, Multimedia applications and virtual reality, Collaborative learning, Croquet, Open source

This paper reviews the features of five 3 dimensional networked virtual environments which support collaborative learning applications, through the comparison of the tools and services they offer. Following that, we justify our choice of platform, which is the Croquet platform, and discuss design and implementation issues. Finally we present the results of the evaluation process of the virtual environment we developed, which consisted of the participation of twelve postgraduate students who completed questionnaires regarding its applicability in education.

Introduction

Collaborative learning is a general term used to describe a multitude of educational practices based on the simultaneous cognitive effort of students and/or educators. Developed initially by Charles Findley as part of his research on the classroom of the future, this type of learning takes place through an electronic conversation between self led co-students and experts [START_REF] Findley | Collaborative Networked Learning: On-line Facilitation and Software Support[END_REF]. Students share a common goal, depend on each other and are mutually responsible for their success or failure.

Research ( [START_REF] Bruckman | No Magic Bullet: 3D Video Games in Education[END_REF], [START_REF] Ballesteros | Future and Emerging Technologies and Paradigms for Collaborative Working Environments[END_REF], [START_REF] Ang | A case study of engaging primary school students in learning science by using Active Worlds[END_REF]) has proven the effectiveness of collaborative learning compared to other educational practices (e.g. competitive or personalized learning). Researchers that speak in favour of the use of computers in the collaborative activity, praise this method's way of aiding the acquisition of higher level cognitive abilities, problem solving abilities, ease in scientific expression and the development of communication, social and higher order thinking skills. Also, researchers conclude that collaborative activities, centred on a cognitive goal and supported by experts, result in the more meaningful and efficient acquisition of knowledge.

The main focus of this paper is on computer supported collaborative learning virtual environments. According to [START_REF] Bouras | Educational virtual environments: design rationale and architecture[END_REF], a collaborative environment is an environment in which:

• The users participating have different roles and privileges;

• The educational interactions in the environment transform the simple virtual space into a communication space. Meaning that multiple communication channels are available to the users, allowing them to interact in multiple ways with each other inside the virtual environment; • The information in the environment is represented in multiple ways that can vary from simple text to 3 dimensional (3D) graphics; • Students are not passive users but can interact with each other and with the virtual environment; • The system that supports the environment integrates multiple technologies;

• The possibility of implementing multiple learning scenarios is supported;

• Recognizable elements from the real world are visualized.

Collaborative virtual environments (CVEs) have many advantages compared to tools supporting traditional teaching methods. These advantages vary from student motivation and entertainment to the simplification of the development of cognitive models from complicated or abstract material. Virtual worlds let users experience environments, which, for reasons of time, distance, scale and safety, would not otherwise be available, especially to those with disabilities [START_REF] Gouveia | A proposal for using visualisation to support collaborative learning[END_REF]. In addition, these systems allow the participation in virtual meetings or educational seminars from geographically remote locations in real time. Finally, through CVEs, education is more student-oriented. Students of multiple different personality types can enjoy and use the environment to discover aspects of their own identity and strong foundations from which classroom discussions can emerge are created [START_REF] Bruckman | Disinhibition in a CSCL Environment[END_REF].

This paper is structured as follows: In section 2 we justify our decision of platform and in section 3 discuss design and implementation issues, concerning the development of our 3D educational environment. Following that, in section 4 we present the statistical results and conclusions derived from an evaluation of the platform conducted in the computer lab with the participation of twelve postgraduate students from the Computer Science Department of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (A.U.TH.). Finally, some concluding remarks and planned next steps are briefly described.

Selection of CVE Platform

In this section we justify our selection of platform. The decision of examined CVEs was based on popularity and proven educational or collaborative value. After examining five 3D collaborative environments (those of Active Worlds http://www.activeworlds.com/, Croquet http://www.croquetconsortium.org, I-maginer, http://www.i-maginer.fr/, Second Life http://secondlife.com and Workspace 3D http://www.tixeo.com) we chose to utilize the Croquet platform for the design and development of a 3D educational environment. This choice was made mainly because it's based on a peer to peer architecture [START_REF] Raab | Hedgehog framework in croquet[END_REF]; it has cross platform capabilities and is also an open source software application [START_REF] Lombardi | Standing on the plateau looking forward, the croquet project[END_REF].

This peer to peer based architecture achieves increased load balancing and facilitates the shared used of bandwidth [START_REF] Findley | Collaborative Networked Learning: On-line Facilitation and Software Support[END_REF]. Furthermore, Croquet's cross platform capabilities and virtual machine framework guarantee a simple and quick installation on any operating system. Finally, being an open source application grants designers the freedom of manipulating the code and creating a multitude of user interfaces, simulations and environments.

In addition, through Croquet's multi-user 3D virtual environment users can share files and applications, collaboratively browse the web, coauthor documents and presentations and communicate through text, VoIP or video. Also, out of the five platforms examined, Croquet is the only one to feature portals which link virtual worlds together. Portals allow users to peer into other environments and share files. Seeing through nested portals is also supported, as is a physics engine capable of simulating vector fields such as wind and gravity [START_REF] Mccahill | Extending croquet spaces with virtual presence, vehicles and vector fields[END_REF].

Design and assessment of a Collaborative e-Learning Environment

During the design process of the educational environment it was decided that it would consist of three virtual spaces. These would be the students' personal spaces, a virtual lecture hall, and a virtual collaboration room. A portal enabling travel between the lecture hall and the collaboration room was regarded as necessary. In addition, we concluded that the students' personal spaces should be actualized in the form of three dimensional windows which contained basic programming and multimedia tools. In the next section we will present in more detail the concepts that were introduced above.

Students' personal spaces

It was considered necessary to grant the students a personal space in order to assist them in keeping notes and expressing their ideas and opinions more effectively. This function was realized through the introduction of a 3D window containing basic tools, provided by the Croquet platform, into the environment. This was achieved by creating a morphic project (basically a Squeak programming code container) consisting of these basic tools and inserting it as the content of a three dimensional window.

The students' personal spaces contain various categorized tools. Indicative tool categories are multimedia, programming and graphics editors. Multimedia tools include a virtual piano, an MPEG player, a sound recorder and others. It should be noted that although the personal space was designed with a single user in mind, it can also be used collaboratively. In other words, multiple students can watch videos or play the piano simultaneously.

Programming tools include tools for the creation and editing of object classes, debugging tools and tools which allow the importing of classes from different versions of the Croquet platform. Furthermore, students can use Computer Aided Design (CAD) tools for brainstorming sessions, presentation programs to create slideshows and word processors in order to take down notes.

The virtual lecture hall

The lecture hall is the central space of the virtual world we developed. This is the room where presentations and lectures occur. This space has three noteworthy features: the initial location of the students' personal spaces, the portal that connects to the collaboration room and the large amphitheatre (see points 2, 1, and 3 in Figure 2 respectively). In addition, point 1 in Figure 2 is the initial insertion point of the environment for the users and also the location they appear at when returning from the collaboration room.

The collaboration room

The collaboration room is the place where students can meet with the members of their team and work collaboratively. In other words they can browse the Internet together and cooperate on the authoring of a document or slideshow. The collaboration room isn't the private space of a specific student group. Its common use is not only allowed but also encouraged so that each team can motivate the other as they work. This space has mainly two features: the main collaboration space which consists of four smaller amphitheatres and the portal which connects to the lecture hall (1 and 2 in Figure 3 respectively). It should also be mentioned that point 1 in Figure 3 is the location the students appear at when coming through the portal at point 3 in Figure 2 of the lecture hall.

The portals

We created two portals inside the virtual space. These portals connect the collaboration room to the lecture hall and vice versa. While traversing these portals students have the ability to carry with them items such as web browsers, text editors, images, 3D objects they created inside the environment (using a tool called Sketch) and others. As has already been mentioned, the collaboration room portal is situated at point 2 of Figure 3, while the lecture hall portal (Figure 4) is at point 2 of Figure 2. The portals are initially closed and can only be activated by accessing the user interface located above their respective 3D windows.

The user interface

The menu bar of the user interface we designed is situated at the top of the screen. Through this menu the user can create a new virtual space, three dimensional shapes such as cubes and spheres and add lighting. Also, through the menu s/he has access to tools such as the text editor, web browser (an embedded Firefox browser), or Sketch tool (which can transform a 2D drawing into a 3D object). In addition, s/he may choose to open an external file such as an image or video which will appear in the environment contained in a 3D window. Finally, communication with users both inside and outside (using Jabber) of the virtual environment is achieved through the use of the chat tool.

Evaluation of the virtual 3D educational environment

In this section we will describe the evaluation method followed and also refer to some of the results which were attained from the questionnaires filled in by the participants. Due to the extensive breadth of the results and because of the limits imposed on the length of this paper we will briefly summarize the most meaningful and informative of these.

A description of the evaluation method

In June of 2007, a presentation of the Croquet platform took place within the context of the course "Virtual Learning Environments", taught during the spring semester of the second year, of the Postgraduate Studies Programme at the Computer Science Department of the A.U.TH.

The presentation was held inside the computer lab (Figure 5) with the participation of twelve postgraduate students consisting of three boys and nine girls. Following a general presentation of the platform and its functionality, the students had a chance at navigating through the three dimensional environment we created and engaging in an educational scenario.

According to the educational scenario the students would collaborate in pairs of computer stations, attempting to complete four specified activities within the allowed time frame. We chose to split the students into teams of six, so that each session would comprise of three collaborating groups. When the permitted duration of time came to an end, the students had to complete two questionnaires.

During the evaluation phase, the students filled in a questionnaire regarding the usability, functionality and future enhancements of the Croquet platform. Following that, they completed a personality test which was based on [START_REF] Lachman | The Midlife Development Inventory (MIDI) Personality Scales: Scale Construction and Scoring[END_REF] and was processed by a postgraduate student of the Psychology Department of the A.U.TH. The ultimate aim of completing two questionnaires was the attempt to cross-correlate the personality traits of the students with their individual impressions regarding the virtual environment. Because our questionnaire sample was relatively small we cannot draw certain evident conclusions. We can, however, hypothesize and try to confirm our theories in future work.

The results of the Croquet questionnaire

Because of the extensive breadth of the results, we shall only present the most meaningful. After observing the users, a difficulty with regard to the navigation and orientation inside the virtual environment was identified. Something which is confirmed by the students' answers to the question "Which are the disadvantages of the platform?" (Figure 6). It seems the students found the navigating more bothersome than any of the technical faults they encountered. Despite the navigating difficulties, the questionnaires reveal an ease in grasping the general functionality of the Croquet platform, as well as a satisfaction gained from the use of 3D graphics. The users' first impressions of the virtual environment were positive overall, while 83% of the students mentioned that they would also like to use it under true educational conditions.

The majority of the users appreciated watching the other teams cooperate (Figure 8) and reckon that their collaboration with the members of their team went well. Also, most teams managed to complete two out of the four activities within the available time, while one team completed them all.

The students used the chat tool extensively finding it convenient, but encountered difficulty identifying the user that was chatting. In other words, they couldn't easily relate the user avatars to the chat nicknames. Most students suggested either using speech bubbles, or having the nicknames hover above the avatars. Also, the majority of the students would rather use VoIP (Figure 7) to communicate with their team (a feature of the system not yet employed effectively).

From the students' answers we can surmise an uncertainty concerning the pedagogical value of the Croquet platform. As mentioned by one student in her questionnaire: "I found the software application entertaining even though I am not used to 3D environments, but I am also not sure about its educational value…". Moreover, the students kept a neutral attitude regarding the degree of ease that they consider the organisation and following of courses through the virtual space, presents.

The results of the personality test

The personality test used was based on [START_REF] Lachman | The Midlife Development Inventory (MIDI) Personality Scales: Scale Construction and Scoring[END_REF]. It includes six personality trait scales: Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness to Experience, Conscientiousness, Agreeableness and Agency. These traits were measured using self-rating (on a Likert scale) of 30 adjectives. The data gathered was processed and analyzed using SPSS v.13 (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences). From this analysis we calculated that the value of the Cronbach reliability coefficient was 0,767. A satisfying value for the reliability of the results since it represents the high probability of the students giving the same answers to an identical test.

Despite the small size of our sample, which results in an inability for definite conclusions we can hypothesize and try to confirm our theories in future work. These theories could prove useful during the design process of a 3D educational environment, in order to satisfy the needs of our target group users. Because of the extensive breadth of the results, we shall mention the most meaningful. From the analysis of the questionnaires we can theorize that users with low percentages of the agency trait usually have positive first impressions and yet they maintain reservations regarding the pedagogical value and educational use of the platform. On the contrary, individuals with high rates of agency have certain levels of previous experience with 3D virtual environments, consider that they collaborated well and they would have liked to have been able to modify the appearance of the avatar they used.

Users with high rates of conscientiousness found the interaction with the 3D windows easy to learn and would not hesitate to use the platform under true educational conditions. Also, students with high rates of openness to experience had difficulty with the user interface, suggesting that a map of the environment should be available to the user. Individuals with low rates of neuroticism had no problem understanding the functionality of the platform and the user interface of the 3D windows. On the other hand, they had difficulty when navigating the virtual environment. Finally, they agree upon the applicability of special devices for the increased immersion of the user and the preference of VoIP for communication between their team members.

Conclusions and future work

From the completed questionnaires we can surmise that the participants found the use of the Croquet platform as an educational tool both inspired and entertaining. Although they were quite reluctant to admit its value as an education tool, we perceive this to be a result of their difficulty and lack of previous experience with navigating 3D virtual environments.

Despite their individual difficulties, the participants where overall enthusiastic and curious about the future educational practices that could be envisaged and developed using this or similar platforms.

Regarding future work, during the evaluation of the platform users were called to rate twelve tools and functions, which will be developed for future versions of the platform, based on the importance and usefulness that was attributed to them.

As is visible from Figure 10, the most desirable features for a future version of the platform according to the students are the use of simulations, the existence of private 3D virtual spaces for each user and speech bubbles for the avatars (probably as a solution to the problem of identifying the person that is chatting which we mentioned previously). According to the students, the less desirable features are the ability to create objects, the utilization of more viewer perspectives and the ability to participate from a 2D environment. Based on the information reported above we plan to augment the educational environment with all the features that were deemed desirable. Following that, we will evaluate the new version of the platform through the implementation of a specific educational scenario. Finally, we will examine the possibility of installing and running the Croquet platform on the XO-1 laptop computer developed by the non-profit organization OLPC.

Figure 1 :

 1 Figure 1: Web browser inside Croquet

Figure 2 :

 2 Figure 2: The lecture hall

Figure 3 :Figure 4

 34 Figure 3: The collaboration room

Figure 5 :Figure 6 :

 56 Figure 5: The computer lab where the evaluation took place

Figure 7 :

 7 Figure 7: Regarding the use of VoIP

Figure 8 :

 8 Figure 8: Regarding the ability to see the other teams

Figure 9 :Figure 10

 910 Figure 9: Regarding using Croquet under true conditions


Alexander Nussbaumer
email: alexander.nussbaumer@uni-graz.at

Christian Gütl

Dietrich Albert
email: dietrich.albert@uni-graz.at

Supporting Technology-enhanced Learning through Semi-automatic Detection and Management of Skill and Competence Structures

Keywords: competence, skill, concept, knowledge, semantic, extraction, detection

A paradigm shift from a knowledge to a competence society is going on, which also becomes increasingly important for educational and vocational training purposes. Skills and competences are employed to describe learning content, students' capabilities, learning processes, and the like. Creating descriptions of skills and competences and assigning them manually is usually an exhausting task. Thus technology-enhanced support is needed. This paper presents a solution approach which enables both the semi-automatic detection of skills and competences comprised in learning content, as well as their assignments to learning content, students, and learning processes, and the exploitation of these relational structures. The methodology is based on a skill model which incorporates both a conceptual and an action component.

Introduction

Dealing with knowledge and detecting semantic information about knowledge has been an active research and application field in computer science in the last years, since knowledge is widely accepted as an important resource in modern society. In particular knowledge representation and management have been extensively treated in scientific literature as well as used for commercial applications. However, a paradigm shift from a knowledge to a competence society is going on, which is characterised by not only focusing on the knowledge but also on the action component, and will be increasingly apply in various application domains including technology-enhanced learning and vocational training. Compared to knowledge, dealing with competences is even more complex on the semantic level and not well supported in technological solutions today. Especially, to our best knowledge, automatically detecting them in content corpora is not supported at all. This has motivated us to start research activities in this direction.

While knowledge is related to facts, concepts, and propositions, the terms skill and competence (or competency) refer to procedural cognitive constructs which are necessary for acting [START_REF] Korossy | Extending the theory of knowledge spaces: A competence-performance approach[END_REF]. The need for skills and competences is derived from the fact, that it is often not sufficient to know something, but instead it is required to act on it. In the remainder of this paper, these terms are used synonymously, whereby competence is rather used to express the cognitive aspect and skill is rather used to refer to the technical and modelling aspect.

In cognitive science, competences have been researched for a long time and theoretical foundations have been made (Albert et al., 1999;[START_REF] Ley | Organizational Competency Management -A Competence Performance Approach[END_REF]. Among others, a model has been proposed which consists of conceptual and action components [START_REF] Heller | Competence-Based Knowledge Structures for Personalised Learning[END_REF]. The conceptual component taken from knowledge representation models expresses knowledge in the widely applied way of concept structures. The action component describes how the concepts are used by humans on a cognitive level, for example, concepts can be remembered, understood, or applied. There are taxonomies which classify the action components, such as the Bloom taxonomy (Bloom, 1956) or the revised Bloom taxonomy (Anderson et al., 2001). The classified action components describe different cognitive processing modes and can be characterised with specific action verbs.

In order to use and process skills and competences in information technology, they have to be formally described and modelled. Currently much effort is done for proper competence definition and standardisation, which should allow machine processing and interoperability of skills. The IMS Global Learning Consortium released a specification for Reusable Definition of Competency or Educational Objective (RDCEO) which contains an information model, a best practices document and an XML binding. These results are the foundation document for the IEEE standardisation project of the Reusable Competency Definitions (RCD, 2007) standard, which is still on-going. However, this standard mainly describes the skills verbally and does not provide a granular skill model which is needed for the automatic detection of skills in learning objects.

Various skill models have been developed in research projects. For example, a skill model according to the cognitive approach described above has been developed in the iClass research project [START_REF] Görgün | Learner Modeling to Facilitate Personalized E-Learning Experience[END_REF] and a similar skill model relying on proficiency levels have been developed in the context of the TenCompetence research project [START_REF] De Coi | A Model for Competence Gap Analysis[END_REF]. While there are several research projects dealing with representing competences (such as TenCompetence (TenCompetence), iClass (iClass), or APOSDLE (APOSDLE)), none of them deals explicitly with acquiring a competence representation from text documents, but they rely on manually provided models and structures. Also, to our best knowledge, in the scientific literature no solutions have been published how to automatically detect skills in content corpora.

In this paper, a novel method is presented, how skills based on the iClass skill model can be semi-automatically detected in learning objects. Relations between learning objects and skills, especially the semantic information which learning objects teach which skills, can be uncovered with this method. Furthermore, a solution how to combine and manage these relations with relations between humans and skills, as well as relations between learning processes and skills will be presented. In this way, content authors are supported who usually create these relations manually.

The remainder of this paper is structured as follows: The next section presents a framework for detecting and managing competence which enables applications to easily deal with competences. Section 3 outlines a method. how skills can be semi-automatically detected by using concept extraction and action verb recognition. Then, in Section 4, an on-going development is presented how to detect the action component. Finally concluding remarks and an outlook on further tasks are given.

A Framework for Skill Detection, Management, and Application

In this section a coherent framework for competence detection, management, and application is presented. The main goal of this framework is to create and management competence structures and to provide them to applications for further usage. In this paper, competence structures are the relations between skills on the one hand and learning objects, persons, and learning processes on the other hand (see Figure 1). This approach enables applications to exploit these structures for various purposes. Especially, indirect relations between learning objects, persons, and learning processes can be derived and utilised. An overview of the several conceptual units of the proposed framework is depicted in Figure 2. The framework consists of two parts, the competence detection and management part and the application part. The first one is the core element which is used by the second one. While the core part is supposed to be the same for different applications, the implementation of the application part depends on the concrete application. On the horizontal axis of this diagram, the life cycle of the skills and skill descriptions are depicted, which make up five processing layers of skills. Orthogonally to them, there are two further layers, the visualisation and user interface layer and the evaluation and benchmark layer. Both are applied on each of the horizontal layers respectively the several conceptual units.

The first horizontal layer comprises three different units which provide the infrastructure to create skill descriptions which are delivered to and further managed by the Skill Model unit. First, the unit for automatic skill discovery from digital objects is responsible for creating new skill descriptions by analysing sets of digital objects. Based on skill detection procedures algorithms are developed for the automatic extraction of the skill descriptions (see Section 3). Since it is unlikely that full automation can be reached out of the box, this component is designed that users can support this task. Second, the User Input unit provides an interface for domain authors to create skill description fully manually. Moreover, is can be used by authors to edit existing skill models or as feedback interface for the semi-automatic detection service.

Third, the Import unit is responsible for importing and converting already existing skill data sets maintained by external systems. Furthermore, skill models for specific domains to set up a skill management system could also be provided by a third party company. The third layer deals with skill assignment to learning objects, persons, and learning processes. Therefore, there are three assignment units which are responsible for different operations. The first unit is responsible for detecting skills in learning objects. In this case, skills which are already described in the Skill Model unit are searched in the learning objects. Similar to detecting unknown skills, the method is described in Section 3. The second unit is responsible assigning skills to humans, which can done by skill assessment and which is often described in the literature. The third unit deals with assigning skills to learning processes, which has to be done manually in most cases. The three assignment units together form the competence structure as outlined in Figure 1.

In order to make use of the competence structures, skill reasoning units are responsible to derive further semantic structures. Essentially, indirect relations between the entities linked to the skills can be derived though semantic reasoning. For example, learning objects can be found which are appropriate for a specific person to close the skill gap of this person, or a learning process can be found which is appropriate for a specific student. Depending on the concrete application scenario, the specific expected reasoning results have to be determined. Therefore specific units are needed which are capable to retrieve respective results.

5(9)

Applications can make use of the competence structures including the derived semantic information. For example, learning management systems (LMS) can calculate learning paths which meet the competence level of learners. Furthermore, learning processes for specific students can be defined which include particular learning objects Orthogonal to the skill life cycle layers, there are two further layers: First, the Visualisation and User Interface layer indicates that for each conceptual unit user interface and perhaps visualisation techniques are important. Especially the domain author should be supported with an easily understandable visual interface while defining new skill description and assigning them to learning objects. Second, the Benchmarking and Evaluation layer acts as an interface to each conceptual unit in terms of benchmarking and evaluation. Especially, the validation of the achieved skill descriptions and structures are important tasks. Furthermore, benchmarking techniques have to be developed to measure the performance of the specific system activities, such as processing time and system behaviour with large sets of data (scalability).

The methods and implementation mentioned above focus on two parts of the framework, the semi-automatic creation of skills and the semi-automatic assignment of skills to learning objects. These are the crucial research parts, while the other units are either already sufficiently researched or they do not require research.

Skill Detection in Learning Content

Basis for the skill detection is a skill model which is appropriate for the detection procedure. As already described in Section 1, a skill model is proposed which consists of two components, concepts and action verb (see Figure 2). In more detail, a modelled skill consists of multiple concepts and one action verb. Hence, the task of detecting new skills in learning objects can be tackled by detecting concepts and action component in learning objects separately and by joining them to skill descriptions then. This skill model has been used in the iClass research project for knowledge structuring [START_REF] Görgün | Learner Modeling to Facilitate Personalized E-Learning Experience[END_REF]. Detecting concepts in digital objects has been researched well and can be seen as state of the art. A prominent approach to concept detection is the LSA and LSI family of algorithms [START_REF] Landauer | Introduction to Latent Semantic Analysis[END_REF]. Groups of terms are identify as concepts by dimension reduction of a highly dimensional vector space which represent a document corpus. A different approach to concept detection stems from the field of ontology learning. There a concept is an element in a model (an ontology) which is created by the domain author by inserting concepts. Therefore concept detection is a semi-automatic task in ontology learning (Maedche, 2002) and the domain author is being supported in creating elements of a model by an algorithm that suggests potential concepts based on text analysis.

Genre detection is an increasingly interesting research field in various application domains for diverse media [START_REF] Bloehdorn | Learning Ontologies to Improve Text Clustering and Classification[END_REF]. Unlike the thematic classification, genre identification discovers groups of media that share a common form of transmission, purpose, or discourse properties. To illustrate this, genre detection for web resources may distinguish research papers, personal experience reports, or commercial product information (see e.g. Stein & Meyer 2006). Though the strong interest in genre detection by the research community, to our best knowledge there is no genre detection solution available for detecting the action component applicable for skill detection.

To detect action verbs we propose an enhanced genre detection approache. Each action component category is assigned with specific patterns which are used to detect the respective component. There are several types of patterns which an algorithms tries to detect separately and assigns weights for their probability. Then the weights are summed up which results in a ranked list to be recommended to the domain author. Finally the domain author has to decide which action component is appropriate.

The next step of the skill detection process is joining concepts and action components to skills. There are two different steps in the skill detection process. First, detecting unknown skills from a set of learning objects (see Figure 4, Step 1), which is processed in the skill building life cycle. Second, detecting skills in learning objects which are already described in the Skill Model unit (see Figure 4, Step 2). While the first step has to be done primarily manually, for the second step an algorithm can be used which compares concepts and action component of current learning object with them already detected and stored in the system. The domain author is needed anyway to confirm or edit the suggested skill assignments. If no appropriate skill could be detected by the system, a fall back possibility to manually input the skill data is needed.

Prototype Implementation

The implementation of a prototype for detecting the action component is still going on.

According to the Bloom taxonomy (revised taxonomy by Anderson and Krathwohl), there are six different cognitive processing modes, how conceptual knowledge is treated by humans. In this approach it is intended to recognise automatically the first three categories.

The detection strategy is based on three different sources which are exploited. First, statistical analysis of the words contained in full text and description of digital object itself or of the contained multimedia objects (e.g. diagrams) might provide indications about the action component. Therefore, the action verbs which are assigned to the Bloom categories are exploited by comparing the action verbs with the words contained in learning objects. Table 1 gives an overview on these action verbs.

Second, all available meta-data are analysed with respect to hints in this directions. For example, Learning objects created in HTML or XHTML could comprise concrete hints in the used meta-data. Furthermore, if available, some fields in the learning object meta-data (LOM) contain explicit hints in this direction.

The third source is the structure of the layout of learning objects which might give information about the action component. Figure 5 gives three examples of different layouts which indicate the action component. The first example shows a list of short statements, which indicates that this learning object teaches a skill of the remember category, since these facts are supposed to be memorised. The second example gives a long text combined with an animated graphics. This is an indication that this learning object teaches a skill of the understand category, since textual description and graphics usually aim at explaining something. The third example consists of a step-by-step explanation. This may be an indication, that a skill of the apply category is taught by this learning object.

Category

Conclusion and Outlook

A framework for competence management and a method for detecting skills have been presented in this paper. Together they outline an approach for semi-automatic detecting skills in learning objects. Since manual assignments of skills to learning objects is an exhausting task for content authors, the solution approach described aims at supporting them in creating skill assignments. These assignments are valuable structural information which can be used in technology-enhanced learning for adaptive testing and learning-path creates, as well as user profiling in terms of knowledge and competences.

There are two main areas for further research and development activities lie in: first, the implementation of the prototype for action verb detection has to be finished and an evaluation has to made about quality and validity of detected action verbs from learning objects. Second, further research should be done in investigating other skill models and if they can be used instead of or in common with the one described above.

Figure 1 :

 1 Figure 1: Competence structures. The relations between skills to learning objects, persons and learning processes.

Figure 2 :

 2 Figure 2: Conceptual units of the proposed competence-oriented framework

1 Figure 3 :

 13 Figure 3: Skill Model.

Figure 4 :

 4 Figure 4: The two steps of skill detection.

Figure 5 :

 5 Figure 5: Examples for layout-based action component detection in learning objects.

Table 1 :

 1 The first three categories of the Anderson (Boom) taxonomy and the related action verbs.

		Action Verbs
	Remember	list, define, tell, describe, identify, show, label, collect, examine,
	(Knowledge)	tabulate, arrange, define, duplicate, label, list, memorize, name,
		order, recognize, relate, recall, repeat, reproduce, state
	Understand	summarize, describe, interpret, contrast, predict, associate,
	(Comprehension).	distinguish, estimate, differentiate, discuss, extend, classify,
		describe, discuss, explain, express, identify, indicate, locate,
		recognize, report, restate, review, select, translate
	Apply	apply, demonstrate, calculate, complete, illustrate, show, solve,
	(Application)	examine, modify, relate, change, classify, experiment, discover,
		choose, dramatize, employ, interpret, operate, practice, schedule,
		sketch, solve, use, write
	text text text	detailed verbal description	explanation
	-short text	of some topic. detailed	1) textual description
	-short text	verbal descriptionof some	detailed description
	-short text	topic.	2) textual description
	-short text		detailed description
	-short text	Animated	3) textual description
		Graphics	detailed description
	Remember	Understand	Apply

Acknowledgements:

The work presented in this paper is partially supported by European Community under the Information Society Technologies (IST) program of the 6th FP for RTD -project iClass contract IST-507922. The authors are solely responsible for the content of this paper. It does not represent the opinion of the European Community, and the European Community is not responsible for any use that might be made of data appearing therein.


Giuseppe Alì

Eleonora Bilotta

Pietro Pantano

Rocco Servidio

Valerio Talarico

E-Learning Strategies in Academia-Industry Knowledge Exchange

Keywords: E-learning, Microelectronic, Virtual Environment

The information and communication technologies are transforming the way people learn. E-learning system not only provides new possibilities for personalized learning at home or workplace, but also reduces the requirements of the expensive classroom training and introduces new innovative forms of knowledge transferring. In this paper, we describe an e-learning platform developed during the first year of the CoMSON European project.

Introduction

The knowledge flow from University to Industry and vice-versa needs to be strengthened to achieve and ensure a leading-edge position for companies and educational institutes. The integration into web of the learning and training materials for microelectronics skills is an ideal approach for professional training which requires the use of adequate learning contents, and appropriate e-learning environments. According to the educational and industrial needs, these environments are designed in order to integrate different systems which improve the student skills in this specific field. In recent years, new applications and tools have been developed in order to improve the training curriculum in the microelectronics domain. The rapid technological progress of Internet tools has fostered the development of web-based interactive environments which include new didactic approaches [START_REF] Helic | Implementing Complex Web-Based Training Strategies with Virtual Classrooms[END_REF][START_REF] Okamoto | Future integrated learning environments with multimedia[END_REF][START_REF] Pahl | Evolution and change in Web-based teaching and learning environments[END_REF][START_REF] Trikic | Evolving open learning environments using hypermedia technology[END_REF]. In most cases, the goal of these systems is to create a problem-based learning which supports the student activities. These opportunities have sparked a proliferation of open-source course delivery systems, courseware delivery systems and on-line educational applications (for example ATutor, MOODLE, and so on). The courses are generally divided in several sections mixing individual distant learning and experimentations at home with remote interaction tools, which help the students to keep in contact with the teachers, and stimulate cooperation among students and team work. In this paper we concentrate on the CoMSON case. The European project CoMSON (Coupled Multiscale Simulation and Optimization in Nanoelectronics) is a Marie Curie RTN (Research Training Networks) project, started on October 2005, which involves partners both from academia and industry, with the common task of realizing an experimental platform in software code which will be used for training young researcher in microelectronics and new employees in the microelectronics industry [START_REF] Alì | An e-Learning Platform for applications of mathematics to microelectronic industry[END_REF]2].

In the next section of the paper, we illustrate the learning scenario within CoMSON, based on the constructivist approach. In the third section we give a short description of the three main environments which are being developed within CoMSON, that is, the Demonstrator Platform, the Virtual Working Place, and the E-Learning Platform. In the subsequent section, we describe the interfaces between these environments. In the fifth section we present an overview of the e-learning architecture, which will be implemented by means of the above interfaced environments. Finally, we conclude by discussing some perspectives for future work and research.

The learning scenario within CoMSON

The European project CoMSON (Coupled Multiscale Simulation and Optimization in Nanoelectronics) is a Marie Curie RTN (Research Training Networks) project. It involves five partners from academia (Bergische Universität of Wuppertal, University of Calabria, University of Catania, Politehnica University of Bucharest, Technical University of Eindhoven) and three partners from industry (NXP, Qimonda, STMicroelectronics), with the common task of realizing a Demonstrator Platform (DP), that is, an experimental platform in software code which will be used for training young researcher in microelectronics and new employees in the microelectronics industry. Learning and training experiences will be amplified and enhanced by coupling this experimental platform with a Virtual Working Place (VWP) and an E-Learning Platform (E-LP). In this framework, the students learn software, through the DP environment, and get familiar with concepts and problems of testing and diagnostics in the microelectronics field, interacting with teachers and other students through the VWP environment. All the activities are guided, organized and assessed within the E-Learning Platform. Thus, the learning scenario within CoMSON consists of three different interrelated modules, as shown in Figure 1. This learning scenario is based on the constructivist theory, which asserts that learning environments should support multiple perspectives or interpretations of reality, knowledge construction, context-rich, experience-based activities [START_REF] Elsom-Cook | Principles of interactive multimedia[END_REF][START_REF] Saarikoski | The 3DE: An Environment for the Development of Learner-Oriented Customised Educational Packages[END_REF]. The constructivist paradigm guides learners to conduct and manage their personalized learning activities, and encourage collaborative and cooperative learning for critical thinking and problem solving [START_REF] Jonassen | Learning to solve problems with Technology: A Constructivist Perspective[END_REF]. The knowledge is constructed through interaction with the environment in which a process of personal interpretation of the perceived world and the negotiation of meaning from multiple perspectives takes place [START_REF] Trikic | Evolving open learning environments using hypermedia technology[END_REF]. In short, we may say that the constructivist approach asserts that people learn best when they interact with the learning material, construct new material for others, and interact with other students about the newly constructed material. The environment through which learners can interact with the learning material is provided by the DP. The environment through which they can interact with other learners is provided by the VWP. The E-LP has the central role of unifying these experiences and guide the learners to an experience-based knowledge.

The components of CoMSON learning activities

In this section we describe briefly the three components shown in Figure 1, which are central for the learning and scientific activities within CoMSON.

The Demonstrator Platform

The DP system is a remote simulator in software code, which comprises coupled simulation of devices, interconnects circuits, EM fields and thermal effects in one single framework. This system is dedicated to the development and validation of appropriate mathematical models for describing the coupling of different physical effects, their analysis (wellposedness) and related numerical schemes. The seminal idea of the DP is to provide an integrated system framework for researchers in order to study new strategies for coupling simulation tools from different physical domains. The main components of DP (see Figure 2; for more details, see [START_REF] De Falco | A Demonstrator Platform for Coupled Multiscale Simulation[END_REF]) are: (1) A library of test examples and experimental measurements to be used as benchmarks for any new method. (2) A set of modules consisting each of a collection of functions providing the basic functionality of the single domain simulators. (3) A control programming language which enables to connect the aforementioned functions and form simulation algorithms. From the CoMSON web server (http://www.comson.org), maintained at the University of Calabria, it is possible to access both to the source code of DP components which is developed in a CVS (Concurrent Versions System), and to the main development and testing system. DP provides a natural test bench with state-of-the art models and parameters from different domains rather than academic simplifications, which will prove very precious for educating and training young researchers by hands-on experience. DP architecture will be able researcher to implement, test and assess their application. "At the same time, researchers interested in new mathematical models for the basic physical phenomena can asses their relevance for overall system behaviour taking advantage of the coupling with system level simulation tools" [START_REF] De Falco | A Demonstrator Platform for Coupled Multiscale Simulation[END_REF].

The Virtual Working Place

The Virtual Working Place is an environment based on web technologies, which integrate different services: information and knowledge exchange, communication, collaborative and cooperative learning. Therefore, the VWP environment supports the following main functions: web-supported documentation authoring and distribution; interchange-ofknowledge; communication environment. This set of functions is intended to enable interaction and knowledge interchange between students and teachers as well as among researchers from different disciplines cooperating in developing new methodologies. Furthermore, the VWP is the place where seamless knowledge exchange processes operate between academia and industry. Its architecture, based on web technologies, has to enhance accessibility, ease of use and ease of integration with other possible platforms. In particular, the goal is to integrate different technologies within the environments of the CoMSON project, in order to improve the user interaction and the information retrieval. Currently, the VWP has been developed as an enabler, comprising three interconnected tools: a web site and a streaming server, for Information/knowledge sharing; a forum and a mailing list system, for Communication; a CVS server, for Collaboration and Cooperation [START_REF] Alì | An e-Learning Platform for applications of mathematics to microelectronic industry[END_REF]2]. These tools are connected to and integrated by a Wiki environment, which is used as a central information and document repository. Collaboration and Cooperation tools assist students at a distance. They allow participants to share their ideas. They are essential for collaborative elearning, virtual agents, and knowledge management initiatives. This category spans a wide range of tools, from simple text-based e-mail clients to complex online meeting tools.

The E-Learning Platform

The CoMSON e-learning platform will be used for training new researchers in the microelectronics field. This environment will be interfaced with a standardized Learning Content Management System (LCMS) and DP remote simulator in order to provide enhanced learning experience. The core of the COMSON e-learning platform is the E-Learning ENabler (ELEN) paradigm, that is, the set of technologies, instruments and operational processes that constitute the CoMSON e-learning platform. The current version of the e-learning system is based on a MOODLE platform. MOODLE is a free Learning Management System (LMS) that enables one to create powerful, flexible, and engaging online learning courses. MOODLE is designed to support a style of interactive learning called Social Constructionist Pedagogy, shortly discussed in the previous section. The learning contents of the didactic modules will be provided both by CoMSON partners and by external collaborators, and are being implementing. More details will be given in Section 5. The authoring tool adheres to the Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM) standard and allows the creation of standard contents that are exportable and executable on every SCORM compliant system.

Interfaces

A lot of effort is currently being put in designing efficient interfaces between the three main CoMSON environments, with a special emphasis on visual and Graphical User Interfaces (GUI).

Most of the things that we will present in this section are concepts which are currently being studied and, is proved valuable, will be implemented in the near future. In fact, most of the CoMSON activities has so far concentrated on developing the single environments, before addressing the problem of connecting them by appropriate interfaces.

Interface between E-Learning Platform and Virtual Working Place

First, we discuss briefly the interface between the E-Learning system and the Virtual Working Place. So far, GUIs have been designed for some specific components of the VWP and E-LP, in order to:

• ease the use of such components;

• enhance user experiences and understanding within such components. Recent researches on visual interfaces concentrate on "virtual worlds" technologies. Success metaphors are those based on everyday experience [START_REF] Pahl | Evolution and change in Web-based teaching and learning environments[END_REF]. The evolution and availability of such enabling technologies suggest research and experimentation in this direction within CoMSON. A possible unifying idea for a graphical interface between E-LP and VWP is the Virtual Campus metaphor. We are currently working on the definition and implementation of a Virtual Campus (VC), based on assistive 3D technologies. This environment provides a unified concept allowing seamless access to the VWP and e-Learning platform. We are also investigating the possibility of creating, inside the VC, a Virtual Laboratory (VL) for supporting experimentation in micro and nanoelectronics through a 3D visual interface. The implication is that virtual interfaces should be perceived by a user as believable and natural, perhaps comrade-like, so as to have a meaningful interaction impact. Thus, the VL could provide an enhancement of the learning experience, playing an important role in the affective and cognitive characteristics of a user in a computer-based environment.

Interface with the Demonstrator Platform

Enhancing the users' learning/training experience means also letting them contextualize their learning by practical applications that can be traced back to their everyday work experience, thus keeping the amount of abstraction brought to users as limited as possible [START_REF] Jacobson | The design of hypermedia tools for learning: Fostering conceptual change and transfer of complex scientific knowledge[END_REF][START_REF] Weller | Delivering learning on the Net: The why, what & how of online education[END_REF]. For this reason, within CoMSON, and in general, we believe that interfacing the e-learning system with the application platform the users are going to deal with during their work activities, is a very effective way of bridging the common gap between experience gathered from e-learning sessions and the experience coming from hand-on activity on the job. This kind of approach implies that an application platform, such as CoMSON's DP, should have a set of suitable interfaces to be integrated with an e-learning platform. Designing an interface for the DP presents several problems, due to the different typologies of users. For expert users, it is more adequate a command line interface, similar to the one used by most simulation tools for industrial applications. This kind of interface may not be appropriate for non-expert user, students or young trainees, for whom a manipulatory and exploratory experimentation with the simulation platform would be more adequate. For this reason, we are studying a 3D interface, inside the VL, through which users can, in a tactile fashion, define mathematical systems that represent and model physical elements. Furthermore, the 3D interface design allows users to create algorithms and solve such equations and, by a set of examination instruments, verify step by step how the algorithms are working and performing. Its concept design is totally based on a model using specific abstraction layers to interface heterogeneous simulation engines. This model supports both general-purpose user interfaces and application/mission specific interfaces. The yellow cylindrical element is used to define an equality relation between two terms. In this model, operators and functions are red, literals and constants are light blue while variables (to be calculated) are light green. This environment would include virtual agents, interactive simulation (based on Java Applets) which allow to visualizing, with animation, and manipulating interactively, step by step, metaphoric representations of the functions, modules and coupling paradigms of DP, for a deeper understanding of them. All environments would be connected through user-friendly graphical interfaces in order to facilitate the interaction with the different levels of the system.

A general architecture of the e-learning system

In this section, we present the general architecture of the e-learning system, which results from the environments and interfaces described in the previous sections. The general aims of the CoMSON e-learning system are: • Fostering research in Mathematics dedicated to industrial needs • Training to use the main simulation tools in Micro and Nanoelectronics • Design Flow • Planning and developing systems, processes and complex or innovative services • Advanced modelling and simulation expert • Designer The architecture of the e-learning system has been designed in order to satisfy the following constraints:

• Multiplatform, independent of the host operative system.

• Graphical interface based on Java, for maximum portability.

• Standard format content management as used by microelectronics companies.

• No specific software is required to be known by the user in advance. The e-learning platform should provide for tutorials on simulation steps (process, device, circuit, EM, optimization), including related software packages as examples. In general, no prerequisite topics are required to be known by the user, but each Learning Unit has its own prerequisites. The full list of prerequisite topics is:

• Modelling of semiconductor devices • Introduction to electrical circuits • Electromagnetism • Interconnects • Basic numerical analysis • Numerical methods for DAEs
The contents have been split in two categories, Basic contents and Advanced contents. Each content will consist of a minimal number of Learning Units (modules). It is decided that specific nodes will provide modules on specific contents. In order to implement the Learning Units contents, the e-learning architecture is composed of four parts: (1) organization of the learning contents, (2) organization of the learning activities, (3) hands-on activities through VWP and VC environments, (4) learning assessment. In the next section, we describe the princiapl aspects of each of these parts.

Organization of the learning contents

The content of the learning material is organized into two levels. In each level, different forms of the content are presented. The descriptions of the learning content in each level follows.

First level:

The content is organized in Learning Units (or Module). Each module is organized in order to give appropriate, efficient learning activities, which are adequate for the learning style of each specific student. For the design of these activities, we use the constructivist learning theories. Each unit is implemented in multiple representation system, in order to stimulate the motivation of the student and satisfy different learning needs. Varieties of media elements and contents are used, such as animation, text, web page, multimedia, simulation, and so on.

Second level: Each module is based upon three components: 1. Organization of the course. 2. Conceptual model of the lesson. Description of the learning activities and laboratory experiences. 3. Additional resources. Also, each CoMSON partner will receive a template, which contains a description of the lessons organization to publish through the e-learning system.

Organization of the learning activities

Modern constructivist and social views of learning constitute a fruitful theoretical approach for the design an appropriate e-learning environment. These approaches emphasized the following aspects: a. Create interest: Design specific activities in order to motivate the student. Such activities reproduce practical problem. b. Stimulate in the student high mental functions: Problem-solving activities are a very important aspect, because they enable in the student analytical and synthetical thinking skills, as well as critical and reflexive thinking. c. Cooperative and Collaborative environment: These systems allow the learners to: i. Construct their solution strategies and to set up a knowledge exchange flow between students. j. Realize solution strategies by using different representation tools. k. Have a control over their learning. The representation tools provide adequate feedback, in order to give them the opportunity to verify their solution strategies.

Hands-on activities through VWP and VC environments

This part of the e-learning system is a collection of virtual environments where the learners can actively construct and experiment their knowledge by performing the specific learning activities using a variety of tools. Also, these environments are strongly related to specific learning styles, which are different between students, for example age and cognitive abilities, or content and nature of the instructional material. Learning is a complex process that differs from subject to subject. Generally, people use a mixture of several styles and may indeed find different learning styles more appropriate to particular tasks. These environments are based on the learning-by-doing concept, which provides the student with an opportunity to do something, get a feedback, and learn from their mistakes. It places the learner at the centre, and in control of the learning experience. A successful design should focus on the construction of limited and specific tools that can successfully help the student perform the learning activities. The main objectives of these environments are to enable the learners to: a. Perform different solution strategies during the problem solving activities. b. Experiment new modalities of learning using virtual environment tools, which are based on the learning-by-doing approach. c. Stimulate the student to acquire hands-on ability. These tools can help learners to manipulate and explore more sophisticated data using different type of tools, such as 3D graphical object, equations, ad so forth. The integration of different tools can help learners to construct knowledge by exploring dynamic representation of the learning concepts in more depth way.

Learning assessment

From the constructivist point of view, assessment can become a valuable tool for learning. From this perspective, the emphasis of assessment is placed on each individual's learning processes and not only on her learning outcomes. In our e-learning environment we use a combination of methods, such as: a. Self-assessment. b. Self-assessment by answering multiple choice questions, automatically corrected by the system. c. Assessment by the teacher based on project work. d. Assessment of the student activity analyzes automatically by the system, for example use of tools, simulation, interaction with agent of the environment, and so on.

Conclusions

Future activities will be mainly focused on research, design and implementation, with some space for ToK and dissemination. The research activities will focus on concepts elaboration and evaluation. The design activities will focus on detailing architectures, based on the concepts emerging from the research, involving from time to time the other partners in CoMSON, based on their interest and expected impacts. The implementation activities will be aimed at producing working prototypes and demonstrators.

Figure 1 .

 1 Figure 1. Overview of the e-learning system.

Figure 2 .

 2 Figure 2. The Demonstrator Platform architecture [4].

6( 10 )

 10 An example of DP-GUI model used for the experimental simulation is shown in Figure2[START_REF] Bilotta | Use of a 3D Graphical User Interface in Microelectronics[END_REF].

Figure 2 .

 2 Figure 2. The partial differential equation modelling the integrated power device.

Author(s):

Giuseppe, Alì


Bernd Thaller

Reinhard Simonovits

CAS for Mathematics E-Learning -a European Perspective

Keywords: Educational technology, Mathematics, Blended learning, CAS, User Interface

We report on activities and progress in a European (Comenius 2.1) project "LTM-Learning Tools for Mathematics" that creates multilingual learning units on the basis of Mathematica and M@th Desktop. A customized user-interface based on palettes is optimized for use in class, and notebooks provide associated math content with a strong emphasis on visualization. The multilingual nature of the learning units makes them useful for transnational school collaboration projects, as has been demonstrated in a pilot project. The problems and exercises are oriented towards applications and encourage explorative group projects. This leads, in particular, to an improved image of mathematics and math instruction among students.

Introduction -The LTM Project

While classical ex-cathedra teaching is still the most widespread form of math-instruction in high schools, there is an increasing percentage of teachers who regard computer-supported ways of teaching a welcome means of arousing interest in students and increasing their level of attention. Best results can probably be obtained by combining the use of educational software such as CAS (computer-algebra systems) or DGS (dynamic geometry software) with the opportunities for communication and research offered by web technologies. Acquisition of didactical know-how and exchange of experiences on an European level will eventually lead to an institutionalisation of computer-supported math education in high schools.

Here we report on some activities in the framework of a Comenius 2.1 project named "LTM -Learning Tools for Mathematics" [1], which is a collaboration of three universities and high schools from eight European countries. It is the project's goal to develop multilingual courseware together with didactical concepts for its use in the classroom and material for in-service training of teachers.

The LTM learning units are an extension of the M@th Desktop application written by Reinhard Simonovits and distributed commercially [2]. M@th Desktop is based on the CAS Mathematica. There will be a freely available LTM-version of M@th Desktop, but Mathematica is still needed to use it. With Mathematica as a basis, it is possible to develop interactive and adaptive teaching material in a very time-and cost-effective way, as compared to other (web-based) technologies like Java or Flash. A big disadvantage of this approach is that high licensing fees for Mathematica have to be paid by schools or students, which can sometimes only be done in the framework of supported projects.

The LTM project advances a method of blended learning that represents a wellbalanced mixture of traditional and computer-aided forms of instruction. Its choice of examples emphasizes applied mathematics and mathematical modelling, which is possible because more tedious computations can be left to the computer. A more explorative approach towards mathematics with group-based learning activities is within reach. A series of pilot projects accompany the LTM project in order to investigate the organisational and practical difficulties of its usage in class, teacher's and students' contentedness, and impact on the level of math skills.

Moreover, LTM aims at facilitating collaboration projects involving classes from different European countries. M@th Desktop will therefore be used in some transnational projects that are currently under preparation and that combine CAS-supported instruction with modern communication tools in order to achieve their results. One of these school collaboration projects has been carried through in 2006 and will be described here in more detail.

In the following we briefly explain the principles and the design of the M@th Desktop and describe some experiences made in classrooms. M@th Desktop supports a variety of different teaching methods, and sometimes this means a radical deviation from traditional habits whose chances and risks have to be explored carefully. We discuss, in particular, how the replacement of purely traditional teaching by computer-assisted forms of instruction might change the role of mathematics in the curriculum and the image of mathematics and math instruction among students.

Teaching with M@th Desktop

The concept of LTM and M@th Desktop

Math software, in particular CAS, usually has a steep learning curve and it demands high expertise from a teacher who wants to make reasonable use of it in a classroom. Many difficulties stem from the necessity to teach mathematical topics and usage of a CAS at the same time. M@th Desktop tries to address these problems and makes every effort to minimize the threshold for using CAS-support for teaching. Mathematica can now be used even in situations where this was considered impossible either due to limited time or due to the daunting complexities of a high-end CAS. M@th Desktop achieves this goal by providing Mathematica with a simplified user-interface that has been optimized in view of its usage in a classroom. When the project started, only Mathematica among the available CAS allowed the manipulation of the user-interface (the "frontend") to the extent necessary for the design of M@th Desktop.

The most important simplification of Mathematica's user interface is achieved by a consequent usage of palettes. Palettes are floating windows containing buttons allowing the teacher or student to execute the required instructions with one click. M@th Desktop contains some general-purpose palettes and some that are designed for special topic areas (see Fig. 1). LTM focuses on elementary functions and linear algebra, whereas the commercial version M@th Desktop contains palettes for essentially all topics of math in secondary education. A button on a palette typically pastes the template of a Mathematica command at the insertion point in the current notebook. For example, the button "Plot" (on the Plot palette) generates the following character string MDPlot[{  , {x ,  ,  }]; Actually, this is just Mathematica's built-in "Plot" command with some minor adaptations. The placeholders can be navigated with the tab-key and filled either with the help of other palette buttons or by typing. Other buttons try to simplify user input in more sophisticated ways, e.g., the Epilog-button pastes a Mathematica option (a command-modifier) automatically at the correct position into the line above, without requiring the user to adjust the curser position first: This simplified input method obviously eliminates typing errors, which otherwise virtually can't be avoided due to the rather complicated Mathematica syntax. In a classroom, the elimination of these typos is otherwise be a very time-consuming task, and would distract from the actual teaching goals. Among teachers working with M@th Desktop, the simplified input is therefore the perhaps most welcome feature of the software.

The palettes do not hide the syntax from the user, but they allow the user to perform a wide range of tasks without the necessity to learn this syntax. In that way, the teacher can start using the CAS without long preparations. Actually, Mathematica has some built-in palettes for character input, and commercial software like Mathematica CalcCenter also uses palettes as the main user-interface element.

It might be regarded a disadvantage that a deeper knowledge of the CAS is not required by M@th Desktop. But usually, this is not the goal of teaching Mathematics. Instead, palettes allow us to perform algebraic manipulations and produce complex visualizations, which will certainly help to discuss the mathematical concepts and ideas.

The palettes associated with special math content (like exponential growth) containsimilar to a specialized pocket calculator -all commands and programs that are needed for experimenting and problem solving within that specialized topic area. Many thousands of lines of Mathematica program code in packages work in the background to provide the functionality of these buttons. This concentration on individual topics areas is in fact another feature facilitating CAS usage, because only a very limited set of activities has to be mastered in order to use the system successfully within a particular chapter of high-school math.

All palettes devoted to particular topic areas are linked with a Mathematica work sheet (notebook) that provides contents for teaching and learning. A typical example of the worksheet's outline is shown in Fig. 3. It contains a movie or activity that introduces the learner to the topic at hand, a section with basic definitions, some solved examples that explain the usage of the associated palette, and a lot of exercises, including open-ended tasks and suggestions for group projects.

The M@th Desktop learning units are highly adaptable. They can be changed both by the teacher and by the student in order to create customized learning aids. M@th Desktop offers many opportunities to create own material like exercise sheets, tutorials, test assignments, or project documentations. It provides more skilful users with templates for Mathematica packages and even makes it fairly easy to create one's own palettes. High adaptability of the contents to individual needs and quick development cycles also facilitate the implementation of educational standards, whose inclusion in the curriculum framework is currently undertaken in several countries in the EU. Within the LTM project, we use that adaptability to create versions in several languages that take into account country-specific curricula. Fig. 3: A typical learning unit with associated palette.

Learning and teaching scenarios

The concept based on palettes and notebooks is flexible enough to support a great variety of teaching styles -from teacher-led instruction to student-centred explorations. However, certain considerations make us think that the teaching approach with which M@th Desktop would be most compatible, is a mix of computer-supported and traditional phases of teaching (blended learning). The learning tools should be used in more than one way (hands-on sessions, teacher-led activities, problem-solving, project work, etc), and they should be used together with other resources. M@th Desktop is not meant as a stand-alone, self-study resource. In our approach, the computer does not try to supplant the teacher, traditional teaching is still there, and decisions about teaching should be made by the teacher. The computer supports his teaching with palettes, notebooks, visualization and exploration tools, but the teacher neither has to follow a particular trajectory, nor should he give up traditional ways of explaining mathematical concepts.

Evaluation of pilot projects has shown that the highest level of student satisfaction can be reached, if the teacher spends about 50% of his time explaining concepts in the traditional way (i.e., on the blackboard), and let students do simple examples by hand. These traditional phases are highly appreciated by students. Having mastered the basics, they enjoy using M@th Desktop and to check their results and to tackle more demanding problems. They can appreciate the power of the CAS only when they have struggled to do similar tasks by themselves. The computer can then be used any time to produce visualizations, perform experiments or computations, and in order to treat more realistic examples. The teacher changes between traditional and computer-supported teaching as he sees fit. We think that computer-supported teaching methods cannot be used to save time in class. But the timeconsuming parallel use of conventional and computer-supported teaching has enormous benefits, as it enables the teacher to present the same ideas repeatedly in two different ways and helps students to acquire knowledge with completely different activities. Thus, mathematical concepts are actually learned twice.

Earlier pilot projects and evaluations of M@th Desktop by teachers have shown that very good results can be obtained if certain basic conditions are fulfilled. Fig. 4, for example, shows that students reacted in a very positive way on the usage of M@th Desktop in their class (evaluation of a pilot project in Sibiu/Romania by Pica Elisabeta Ana and Marcu Alexandru, Questionnaire report on usage of Mathematica and M@th Desktop in class). Good results and a high-level of contentness can only be obtained if certain basic conditions are fulfilled. Just a few hours in a computer lab are certainly not sufficient. There must be enough time and every student should have access to the software also at home. Only then, use of technology can become automatic and thinking about mathematics can play the dominant role. This is, in particular, confirmed by the evaluation of some Austrian pilot projects [START_REF] Simonovits | Linear Regression mit M@th Desktop, IMST3 Projektbericht 2005/2006[END_REF][START_REF] Welik | Pilotprojekt zum praktischen Einsatz der Mathematica-basierenden Unterrichtssoftware LTM and der HBLA Pitzelstätten[END_REF][START_REF](PISA): Problem Solving for Tomorrows World: First measures of Cross-Curricular Competencies from PISA 2003[END_REF], where students' attitude and success was particularly positive in the case of notebook classes, but rather negative, if they were only exposed occasionally to M@th Desktop in computer labs.

Risks of CAS-supported teaching

Use of educational software aims at increasing the quality of math education and the competencies of the teachers. Furthermore, we hope to improve the students' e-learning competencies, which will be useful for their studying at a university and for their later professional life.

But while some competencies might improve in computer-assisted education, other skills will be lost. Certainly, conventional computational and algorithmic skills will diminish, simply because less time is spent with these traditional activities. The teaching community will have to decide whether these changes are, as a whole, positive, and whether they are worth the additional efforts necessary to implement computer-aided education. What are the particular chances and risks of using M@th Desktop?

Teacher-led instruction with computer support often involves the teacher showing something on a computer screen using video projection. Our pilot projects have shown that then at least some students will not be able to follow the lessons, no matter how carefully and slowly the teacher proceeds. During our observations it always happened that at some time some student was not be able to reproduce the teacher's screen content exactly. When that happens, the student will anxiously try to get the seemingly missing information from neighbours or by trial and error. At this moment they stop thinking about mathematics at all, because it is now the technology that requires their full attention. Despite all simplifications that M@th Desktop provides for CAS input, the teacher has to be very careful that all students have reached the same state before any new thoughts are presented.

The trick of having good students help their weaker colleagues relieves the teacher but leads to a mixed success. While the good students actively recapitulate and verbalize their knowledge, the weak students are again in the role of passive recipients. This mechanism is probably responsible for the observation that use of M@th Desktop sometimes increases the gap between good and weak students. Some of the teachers involved in pilot projects therefore suggest that teaching with M@th Desktop should differentiate between good and weak students and they require additional training units for weak students.

M@th Desktop's approach to problem solving basically involves to press buttons in a certain order, i.e., to choose from a finite number of pre-fabricated Mathematica commands to which the user provides the appropriate parameters. This requires the student to decompose the problem into suitable sub-tasks that can be accomplished with the provided buttons. In most cases, this removes the algorithmic and computational aspects of problem solving, which is certainly a very radical deviation from traditional approaches. Using M@th Desktop as the only teaching method is probably not the right way, as emphasized in the previous section. It depends on the teacher how the new economy of time in problem solving is used in a responsible way to emphasize thinking about mathematical concepts.

A prolonged brainstorming phase should stand at the beginning of any task and the students should be required to describe their results and the methods used for the solution verbally (M@th Desktop has an "Answer" button for providing specially formatted text cells). Students who cannot speak about the problem and describe its solution correctly most likely do not understand the mathematics behind it. It is usually regarded as a particular advantage of a CAS-based approach to teaching, that graphical, symbolical, numerical, and textual representations of mathematical facts can be easily generated and appear as a unity to the learner. But both teachers and students have to be made aware of these possibilities.

Given the fact that a high-end CAS like Mathematica in combination with M@th Desktop is powerful enough to solve all math problems at high-school level with very few keystrokes, many traditional exercises will become rather trivial and pointless. Therefore we try to select examples that illustrate interesting applications of Mathematics to the "real world". A large class of exercises that are now possible even on an elementary level involves fitting data and representing measured phenomena and observations by mathematical expressions.

One particular danger that arises in some situations with the usage of M@th Desktop palettes for problem solving is what we would like to call the "proof-by-exhaustion mannerism". As performing a particular step in a computation is neither particularly laborious nor does it cost much time, students sometimes have the idea just to try out everything by brute force, hoping that the right answer will turn up sooner or later.

We had occasion to observe such mannerism during a project where students had to fit a mathematical function to measured data. The idea was that by analyzing the data plots and by identifying the mechanisms producing the data, the students should judge which function (linear, quadratic, exponential, etc.) would describe the phenomenon best, and then use the method of least squares to adjust some model parameters. Actually, they didn't care at all about the shape of the curves or the mechanisms behind, they just tried every model that was at their disposal and chose the one that gave the smallest sum of squared errors. Thus they were very successful in identifying the right model, but they did not think about the underlying problem or the properties of elementary functions. It is, of course, the responsibility of the teacher to identify a problem like this by further tests or by requiring a verbal description of the solution method from the student.

Active involvement of students -a transnational school project

Projects with students are a particular strength of computer-supported education [START_REF] Fuchs | Exciting Normal Distribution[END_REF]. M@th Desktop makes it easier to perform application-oriented math projects in a class. Common features of the student projects done in the framework of the LTM project are the following: At the beginning, pupils are asked, whether they want to participate in a group project. Nobody is forced to participate against his/her will. Then there is a common discussion about the project's goals and the guidelines for the evaluation and the assessment of the results, in order to improve the pupil's ability to work in a team. The project will then become part of the teaching activities. The teacher encourages group and team work, and takes special care of improving the performance of pupils during presentations. On some occasions, students are given the opportunity to present their work in front of a larger audience, either at school or at international meetings. It is an important goal to have both sexes participate equally in projects and project presentations.

In the schools of some LTM project partners, M@th Desktop is well established for teaching and as a tool for students' own explorations. In this situation it suggested itself to try a transnational coorperation project with students. In the future, localization of the M@th Desktop software to several languages will even facilitate this type of projects.

In 2006, a transnational pilot project was carried out by HAK Grazbachgasse, Graz, and Lycée René Cassin in Strasbourg [START_REF] Simonovits | Linear Regression mit M@th Desktop, IMST3 Projektbericht 2005/2006[END_REF]. It was agreed that various aspects of the growth of regional energy consumption would be the theme of the collaboration. Regarding the content of the projects, both classes were prepared using the same instructional materials, and the relevant themes were differential calculus and the fitting of curves to given numerical data. This joint project also promised the interesting opportunity to connect mathematics instruction with foreign language instruction and the imparting of "soft skills" such as communications and organizational ability.

The pupils in Graz formed 9 groups of two and, on their own, were to seek the collaboration of 9 groups of three in France. The pupils from Graz gathered data for the Austrian province of Styria, and those from Strasbourg gathered corresponding data for the French region of Alsace. The data were then exchanged, the pupils from Graz analyzed the Alsace data and the pupils from Strasbourg analyzed the data from Styria with the help of M@th Desktop palettes and worksheets. Both results were then communicated to the partner teams, compared, interpreted, described in a M@th Desktop notebook, and presented to the class. The notebooks with the results typically contained a description of the assignment, the raw data displayed both in lists and graphically, a description and evaluation of the tested mathematical model, a short description of the results of the pupils from the other country, an interpretive summary with graphical representation, and a prognosis for the year 2005 (for which no data was available at the time).

The project was evaluated by questionnaires and in discussions with the students and the evaluation findings were published in the final report [START_REF] Simonovits | Linear Regression mit M@th Desktop, IMST3 Projektbericht 2005/2006[END_REF][START_REF] Welik | Pilotprojekt zum praktischen Einsatz der Mathematica-basierenden Unterrichtssoftware LTM and der HBLA Pitzelstätten[END_REF]. For the Austrian side, the results can be summarized as follows: Students were highly satisfied with mathematics instruction on the basis of M@th Desktop and with the project in particular. They carried out the project with great motivation and managed to retain their great excitement through to the end. A good relationship between teachers and pupils and a positive fundamental class attitude toward mathematics represent possible prerequisites for the success of such projects.

Changed image of mathematics

In several countries of Europe, evidence of a problem with high-school mathematics seems to be mounting. Recent PISA studies confirmed evidence of a problem with high-school mathematics in many European countries [START_REF](PISA): Problem Solving for Tomorrows World: First measures of Cross-Curricular Competencies from PISA 2003[END_REF]. Students tend to find mathematics less enjoyable and less relevant, and most of them feel that their understanding of the subject is incomplete. This is reflected by the fact that less students choose to study math or science at universities, and those who do have increasing difficulties with the transition between school and university. In the UK, these statements were even confirmed by rigorous investigations [START_REF] Savage | Measuring the Mathematics Problem[END_REF]8].

It is not clear whether the acquisition of fundamental mathematical ideas and the mastery of traditional skills can be improved through computer-supported, project-oriented instruction. On the contrary, the learners actually spend less time practising these skills than during conventional math education, and in group projects, social skills seem to be at least as important as mathematical skills. It might be the case that students' success in acquiring knowledge and problem solving skills depends to a higher degree on the personality and the commitment of the teacher than on the applied teaching method.

It may, however, be assumed that computer-supported instruction, application-oriented problem solving, and interesting group projects will lead to a much better reputation of mathematics than in a more traditional class with the normal elements of calculation drills. As demonstrated in pilot projects with notebook classes, teaching with M@th Desktop will lead to a very positive image of mathematics as an interesting and relevant field of science. Students usually enjoy these math lessons -it is not a subject to be feared. They no longer question the usefulness and importance of mathematics in the modern world [START_REF] Simonovits | Linear Regression mit M@th Desktop, IMST3 Projektbericht 2005/2006[END_REF]. The choice of application-oriented exercises in the M@th Desktop worksheets and the perceptible power of the CAS certainly contribute to the new positive image of mathematics.

Summary and Perspective

The software M@th Desktop encourages students to use symbolical, numerical, graphical and textual forms of representation in problem solving in a way that is balanced and appropriate for the particular purpose at hand. As a result, the student's level of attention as well as their satisfaction with math instruction increases. On the downside, there are sometimes considerable organisational and fiscal problems associated with the use of Mathematica and M@th Desktop in class, and optimal conditions can only be found in notebook classes.

Availability of instructional material in several languages, as provided by the LTM project, will facilitate the execution of transnational school projects, where math problems are solved in cooperation between students from different countries. Computer support lets us choose interesting problems with a realistic background, because the more tedious numerical computations may be left to the computer.

Usage of a CAS in education will make much of the algorithmic and computational work found in traditional scenarios obsolete. What then will replace these skills in the future? What role will Mathematics play in future education? Presently, mathematics is still widely associated with numeracy -with counting and calculating. When typical student activities are changed, the future image of Mathematics will become different. It will be a major task of math education to emphasize the role of mathematics in general education, in social discourse, in natural sciences, and as a tool for analyzing economical, social, and scientific matters. In short, mathematics should be presented as an open system rather than a closed intellectual game.

Fig. 1 :

 1 Fig. 1: Some LTM palettes in Mathematica.

  MDPlot[{  , {x ,  ,  }, Epilog  {Red, PointSize[0.025], Point[{ , }]}]; After filling the place holders, e.g., in the following way, MDPlot[{Sin[x], {x,-π,π}, Epilog  {Red, PointSize[0.025], Point[{π/2, 1}]}];we obtain the graph in Fig.2immediately after hitting the "Evaluate" button.

Fig. 2 :

 2 Fig. 2: Output of a LTM Plot-command.

Fig 4 .

 4 Fig 4. Overall reception of M@th Desktop in class

September 26 -28, 2007 Villach, Austria 4(10)

Author(s):

Bernd Thaller, ao.Prof. Dr., Institute for Mathematics and Scientific Computing, University of Graz, A-8010 Graz, Austria, bernd.thaller@uni-graz.at Reinhard Simonovits, Dr., Handelsakademie Grazbachgasse A-8010 Graz, Austria, reinhard.simonovits@uni-graz.at