Development of a Collaborative Platform for Art Education: From Pedagogy to Technology

We report on the development of a Java-based application devised to support collaborative learning of Art concepts and ideas over the Internet. Starting from an examination of the pedagogy of both Art education and collaborative learning we propose principles which are useful for the design and construction of a “lightweight” software application which supports interactive Art learning in groups. This application makes “dynamics” of an art work explicit, and supports group interaction with simple messaging and “chat” facilities. This application may be used to facilitate learning and teaching of Art, but also as a research tool to investigate the learning of Art and also the development and dynamics of collaborating groups. Evaluation of a pilot study of the use of our system with a group of 20 school children is presented.

Applications of a Collaborative Open Object Oriented Learning Environment to Electronics, Computing and Mathematics Education

A lightweight Java application suite has been developed and deployed allowing collaborative learning between students and tutors at remote locations. Students can engage in group activities online and also collaborate with tutors. A generic Java framework has been developed and applied to electronics, computing and mathematics education. The applications are respectively: (a) a digital circuit simulator, which allows students to collaborate in building simple or complex electronic circuits; (b) a Java programming environment where the paradigm is behavioural-based robotics, and (c) a differential equation solver useful in modelling of any complex and nonlinear dynamic system. Each student sees a common shared window on which may be added text or graphical objects and which can then be shared online. A built-in chat room supports collaborative dialogue. Students can work either in collaborative groups or else in teams as directed by the tutor. This paper summarises the technical architecture of the system as well as the pedagogical implications of the suite. A report of student evaluation is also presented distilled from use over a period of twelve months. We intend this suite to facilitate learning between groups at one or many institutions and to facilitate international collaboration. We also intend to use the suite as a tool to research the establishment and behaviour of collaborative learning groups. We shall make our software freely available to interested researchers.