Collaborative trails in e-learning environments

This deliverable focuses on collaboration within groups of learners, and hence collaborative trails. We begin by reviewing the theoretical background to collaborative learning and looking at the kinds of support that computers can give to groups of learners working collaboratively, and then look more deeply at some of the issues in designing environments to support collaborative learning trails and at tools and techniques, including collaborative filtering, that can be used for analysing collaborative trails. We then review the state-of-the-art in supporting collaborative learning in three different areas – experimental academic systems, systems using mobile technology (which are also generally academic), and commercially available systems. The final part of the deliverable presents three scenarios that show where technology that supports groups working collaboratively and producing collaborative trails may be heading in the near future

Evaluating the durability and performance of polyoxometalate-ionic liquid coatings on calcareous stones: Preventing biocolonisation in outdoor environments

Rock-based materials exposed to outdoor environments are naturally colonised by an array of microorganisms, which can cause dissolution and fracturing of the natural stone. Biocolonisation of monuments and architectures of important cultural heritage therefore represents an expensive and recurring problem for local authorities and private owners alike. In this area, preventive strategies to mitigate biocolonisation are generally preferred to curative approaches, such as mechanical cleaning by brush or high-pressure cleaning, to remove pre-existing patina. The aim of this work was to study the interaction between biocidal polyoxometalate-ionic liquid (POM-IL) coatings and calcareous stones and evaluate the capacity of these coatings to prevent biocolonisation through a series of accelerated ageing studies in climate chambers, carried out in parallel with a two-year period of outdoor exposure in north-eastern France. Our experiments show that POM-IL coatings did not affect water vapour transfer nor significantly alter the total porosity of the calcareous stones. Simulated weathering studies replicating harsh (hot and wet) climatic weather conditions demonstrated that the colour variation of POM-IL-coated stones did not vary significantly with respect to the natural uncoated stones. Accelerated biocolonisation studies performed on the weathered POM-IL-coated stones proved that the coatings were still capable of preventing colonisation by an algal biofilm. However, a combination of colour measurements, chlorophyll fluorescence data, and scanning electron microscopy imaging of stones aged outdoors in northern France for two years showed that coated and uncoated stone samples showed signs of colonisation by fungal mycelium and phototrophs. Altogether, our results demonstrate that POM-ILs are suitable as preventative biocidal coatings for calcareous stones, but the correct concentrations must be chosen to achieve a balance between porosity of the stone, the resulting colour variation and the desired duration of the biocidal effect over longer periods of time, particularly in outdoor environments

Collaborative trails and group profiling within an e-Learning environment

In recent years in the field of education there has been much attention given to work around Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL). The basic idea is that learners profit from working together and learning together, as this invokes a deeper learning, and computers and the Internet provide just the tools needed for communication and collaboration to enable this kind of learning. The idea of collaborative trails was introduced in Kaleidoscope deliverable D22.2.1 (Schoonenboom et al., 2004), an earlier deliverable from the TRAILS project. This deliverable seeks to explore further the different forms that collaborative trails can take, how such trails can be usefully analysed, and how systems can support learners in creating and reflecting on the trails they take. It should be noted that not all collaborative trails come from collaborative learning – collaborative trails can emerge from a collection of individual paths through learning materials of learners who never meet or communicate with one another at all. The focus in this deliverable, however, is mainly on the trails created by learners when they work together on some common learning goal, in a CSCL context. The document is structured as follows: Section 2 gives a brief overview of the theoretical background to the development of CSCL, looking at constructivism, cooperation and collaboration. Section 3 looks at ways in which these theories can be put into practice in a computer supported environment. Three pedagogical models for achieving this are considered, and the section concludes with an assessment of how trails can be supported in such scenarios. Section 4 then moves on to look in more detail at the design of environments to support CSCL and at the techniques of collaborative filtering and conversational analysis that can be used to recommend items to learners and to help reflection on collaborative activity respectively. Section 5 reports on some of the existing research systems and state-of-the-art collaborative learning systems currently available, and categorises them into a taxonomy proposed by Jermann et al. (Jermann, Soller and Muehlenbrock, 2001), and concludes with a look at some of the main ongoing research issues in collaborative learning. Section 6 considers the new dimension added to collaboration via technology when the technology is mobile, and considers the occurrence of collaborative trails in mobile learning. Section 7 takes a look at how much support for collaboration is provided by current commercial e-learning systems, and we conclude in Section 8 by describing some learning scenarios that show where we think support for collaborative trails may be going in the next few years – they are futuristic, but quite possible with the technologies being currently developed