Shared Documents in WebWisdom Glossary of Definitions Asynchronous: A self paced learning model COM: Distributed Object Model from Microsoft used in internals of Windows, Word etc. Component_DOM: label of an HTML component internal to a page CORBA: Distributed Object Model from the OMG (Object Management Group) – an industry consortium Current focus: Part of Page of current attention either because the pointer is there or the user performed some action such as clicking a button DEO: Distributed Educational Object using any approach of the Pragmatic Object Web DOM: The document object model – usually that developed by the Web Consortium W3C Dynamic HTML (DHTML): Technology supported by Netscape and Microsoft Version 4 and higher browsers. It enables pages to be built in layers from multiple components that can be separately repositioned and changed in both contents, order in layer and if necessary hidden FoilWorld: A hierarchical collection of Curricula pages displayed by WebWisdom and stored either on a web site or in the WebWisdomNT database. IMS: Instructional Management System from Educause aimed at setting Internet learning standards and supplying reference implementations. (http://www.imsproject.org ) Java: The dominant web computing language and an important distributed object model LecCorder: WebWisdom.com packaged product to allow convenient audio-recording of lectures with web display in high or low resolution form.(http://www.leccorder.com) Page: Material viewed by teacher or learner on a computer screen Page_URL: Web label for a Page. Pragmatic Object Web: A concept developed at Syracuse University which captures the coexistence of multiple object models with different characteristics SessionWeb: The collection of Internet material used in a single learning session such as a lecture. Synchronous: A learning model where information is shared in real time between students, mentors and teachers Tangobean: A WebWisdom.com technology allows automatic sharing of Java DEO’s that are built according to the popular Javabean design frameworks TangoInteractive: A WebWisdom.com technology supporting sharing of general DEO’s with a Java, C++ and JavaScript interface. TangoInteractive is packaged with a mybriad of basic shared tools such as chat, whiteboard etc. WebCT: A popular authoring tool for courses featuring a rich set of options such as glossaries and quizes. WebWisdom: The integration of TangoInteractive with a browser pages to provide a powerful interface to shared curricula material. WebWisdom.com: A small business centered in Syracuse New York with leading edge multimedia, collaboration and distance education products. WebWisdomNT: A modern web-linked database optimized for storing educational objects DEO’s WebWisdom Active Object: A technology developed by WebWisdom.com to enable the sharing of Java applets placed in Web pages. It combines the Java and JavaScript interfaces of TangoInteractive WebWisdom Intelligent Server: The Java server combining the WebWisdomNT database and XML templates to enable display of curricula stored in the database in Web browsers. World Wide Web: All the material (Pages) stored on the Web WiseGuy: A Java Servlet technology developed by WebWisdom.com that implements filters to enhance the curricula value of simple Web Pages including those exported from Microsoft PowerPoint. XML: A powerful new technology from W3C that enables custom tags to be developed that can capture the structure of general content. Pragmatic Object Web WebWisdom’s design is built around an emerging architecture for distributed systems that we call the “Pragmatic Object Web”. This notes the ongoing convergence of web and distributed object technologies to form what is usually called the object web. This is currently approached from four major points of view: CORBA (from an Industry Consortium) the Object Management Group, Java from Sun Microsystems, COM from Microsoft and a set of technologies from the web consortium W3C including XML and a document object model (DOM). These approaches are somewhat complementary but often competitive and in constructing real systems, we pragmatically use the best of each approach – this assumes that some complex unpredictable worldwide process will blend these four giants into a composite distributed system architecture and technology base. Our pragmatic approach appears more likely than any other to lead to systems that are both powerful today and likely to be quite consistent with future changes. The rapid change in base commodity technologies implies that one must expect that any deployed system is not likely to use the “best available” technology but a spectrum of interlocking approaches as best in practice at implementation dates stretching back over the last two or so years. The object web revolution has been driven as much by the adoption of open standards such as HTML, JDBC and IIOP as by the more obvious remarkable software artifacts and technologies such as browsers and the Java language. These object web standards and technologies appear to offer significant potential for improvements in universal access. In particular the object web standards allow the development of a more structured uniform information space wherein reusable universal access interfaces can be developed and used in a wide variety of circumstances. Although this potentially possible, it is by no means guaranteed as an unguided haphazard development of object web applications could lead to a situation actually worse than that now with increased information served by more and not less data structures. As a relevant example, XML technology could allow the definition of the structure of glossary items used to support more or less all education and training applications. We could then optimize universal access for this structure. On the other hand, it is also possible for each web site to develop and use a different XML syntax for their glossary and force the costly and inefficient scenario with a separate universal access mechanism in each case. WebWisdom.com has developed various custom (proprietary) interfaces where a good standard does not currently exist, but we link where possible to standards such as the metadata proposals of Educause’s IMS (Instructional Management System) project. As we store the object components in a database, it is not difficult for WebWisdom.com to restructure its delivered educational objects to accommodate new standards either in display of information or in metadata definitions. In this way one can for instance choose between framed or dynamic HTML display pages and ensure that ones curriculum is optimally indexed by different Web search engines Distributed Educational Objects Many organizations agree that “distributed educational objects” (DEO) are the natural building blocks of re-usable modula curricula. However as discussed above, there are a plethora of different definitions of an educational object and so we make a set of pragmatic choices choosing a hybrid model of DEO’s which has been designed to allow needed authoring, delivery and management capabilities. We adopt a conventional hybrid information object model and define a DEO with a tuple (Page_URL, Component_DOM). This views information as a collection of components (labeled by Component_DOM) arranged in pages labeled by Page_URL. In the WebWisdom.com approach, this conventional label is mapped into a reference to a database cell and distributed objects can be constructed at any level of granularity as a collection of the contents of multiple cells. Pages are accessed through web address, file location, CORBA or Java naming service or whatever hierarchical naming scheme evolves on the object web. A “Page” is for traditional education, the basic curriculum unit. It is a “screenfull” or “foil” which is discussed by the lecturer or studied by the student as a single unit with cross referencing between concepts not requiring tiresome browsing and reloading of the browser page. The conventional hierarchical labeling of Page_URL seems quite natural for future web education and training with as we elaborate later, some name like university/ college/ department/ program/ course/ lecture. However the information within a given page is much less structured and consists of some often-haphazard arrangement of multimedia information nuggets. Further entities within the page can be repositionable dynamically using DHTML. WebWisdom.com’s TangoInteractive collaboration technology has the unique feature of supporting the sharing of all aspects of an object including both coarse grain and fine grain components. The latter, which is described by the Component_DOM label, is managed through TangoInteractive’s JavaScript interface. The former is implemented as TangoInteractive shared browser whose location field holds the label Page_URL. This is general enough to include reference to either existing web documents or dynamic pages, constructed on the fly from database back-ends. Four Level Navigation Model of WebWisdom Let us the hierarchical structure labeled by the tuple (Page_URL, Component_DOM) in more detail. We need to define four essential units of information – in order of decreasing size: the Internet or World Wide Web, the SessionWeb, the page and the current focus of attention. The first three levels are labeled by Page_URL and the current focus is identified by the Component_DOM. We now describe the levels in order As emphasized earlier, we will follow the market place in the area of resource discovery and coupling to the hierarchical URL namespace which allows one to navigate the World Wide Web. WebWisdom automatically generates metadata such as those proposed by Educause's IMS project to integrate educational objects to the topology of the resource-discovery world. Actually one is only interested in the subset of the World Wide Web, which we sometimes called foilworlds which are at the lowest level a presentation or SessionWeb described below. These are grouped into courses; courses into academic programs; programs into departments; departments into schools and schools into universities. WebWisdomNT supports this organization both on the web and internally to the database using its hierarchical management interface. The same arrangement is also exposed in the browser using dynamic HTML to provide a familiar directory like browsing interface. Every level of the hierarchy has a visual representation, which is the index to a presentation at this level and the course home page at the course level. All of these representations are as usual treated as Pages discussed below. The SessionWeb is the collection of material used as information resources within a given teaching or learning activity. For instance for a lecturer, the SessionWeb consists of all pages relevant to a different lecture as well as all their subcomponents. This local SessionWeb is of course likely to be dynamically updated with outside links as topics come up during the lecture. We include in this concept all local navigation both internally to the pages and between the pages that comprise the document space of a given learning session. In particular this definition allows the lecturer to pick and choose between presentation material contained in the SessionWeb with an order that is determined in real-time. This contrasts with clumsy frameset technology and the static sequential order convenient in most systems (e.g. PowerPoint) today. In a more general browsing activity, a student learner's SessionWeb would be less structured and roughly consist of all pages and components stored in cache. Technically the SessionWeb is quite small and so able to support richer linkage and access models using very fast client side technologies such as Java and JavaScript with the data structures stored in memory. WebWisdom builds automatically a powerful dynamic HTML navigation tool for the lecturer by downloading the indexing material for the lecture. WebWisdom also supports the preparation of general play lists, which allow the lecturer to generate an initial choice both for the contents and initial order of the SessionWeb, which consists of any pages either served from a conventional Web Site or generated from the WebWisdomNT database. Note that PowerPoint can be stored in the WebWisdomNT database and this allows the construction of a rich navigation index to any set of PowerPoint slides and any mix of PowerPoint and HTML. As defined above, the Page represents the unit of information, where in conventional practice, one does not need to scroll, reload web browser or otherwise break the attention of teacher or student. This implies a natural and limited size and in teaching a Page corresponds to a few minutes study and a SessionWeb is typically some 60 to 180 minutes. Now you could argue that many web pages are quite large and scrolling is necessary and desirable. Our experience is that is less satisfactory than a set of separate pages, each viewable in its entirety at one time. As an example, it is not usually good practice to have Pages with titles like “Concepts Part I”, “Concepts Part II” … but rather a hierarchical organization with Pages titled “High level Organization of Concepts”, “First Concept in detail” etc…. Although scrolling is not always advisable, WebWisdom does support shared scrolling of pages but this capability can be switched off. Pages can be switched between either by conventional loading of URL’s or more elegantly for related information by using dynamic HTML to choose between different layers. This is the mechanism used to move between curricula page, index, quiz, survey, glossary and notes (background material). Notes these ancillary documents can be linked to documents at any level of the Page_URL hierarchy. There is a growing trend to use of XML rather than HTML to record content. XML is of course designed to record content and HTML the display layout of the pages. WebWisdomNT is built around this modern concept and the database contents can be thought as the XML attributes, which are then turned into HTML using the WebWisdom Intelligent Server, which acts as a portal to the WebWisdomNT database. One implements the linkage of curricula material with audio- video class recordings of classes by including the relevant XML tags in the template to specify all these components. WebWisdom.com’s LecCorder technology packages the production of audio-video material automatically linked to curricula. Finally WebWisdom supports the sharing of components of a page or the current focus. These include a variety of useful capabilities including shared cursors, form text fields and buttons. The latter allows one to easily share access to the many server resources, whose access is specified by HTML forms. Issues in Universal Access and Customized Display TangoInteractive manages the sharing of educational objects and allows each client to optimize its view of the DEO based on user preferences and capabilities of the client machine and network connection. This allows WebWisdom to support universal access so that citizens can access educational material in spite of physical disabilities such as blindness, deafness and impaired muscular capabilities as with quadriplegics. As a simple example, a client with a low bandwidth network connection would request the low resolution version of an image and one serving a user with impaired vision, the audio augmentation of this image. WebWisdom.com supports this choice as each client can map the URL to the form supporting the required rendering of the information. This is possible whether the data is fetched from static web pages or generated dynamically from WebWisdom’s backend database. WebWisdom can be used to share DEO’s between different users or between different display devices for a given user. This replication of object between different display modalities can be implemented within a single machine or between multiple machines serving a single user. Note that although it may seem extravagant, using multiple machines for a given user is quite practical given the rapidly decreasing hardware prices. In fact, we regularly use this strategy when teaching, so that one puts the key functionalities of audio/video conferencing, chosen curriculum page and chat/white boards on different machines assigned to the teacher. Students in this example typically view the curriculum on their own lab machine while a single machine handles audio and video for collocated students. Integration of Asynchronous and Synchronous Learning Models We note that WebWisdom’s model for instruction includes both asynchronous and synchronous modes supported with the same curriculum in a common fashion consistent with universal access. We assume that in each case, students and teachers access curriculum material stored as DEO’s on web servers, object brokers or equivalent. Asynchronous or self-paced learning occurs when each participant accesses this material in his or her own time. Synchronous learning occurs when this same material is replicated among a class and discussed interactively. This model allows a single approach to universal access and customized display, which is independent of learning model. Authoring Strategies Supported by WebWisdom 1) HTML Pages where below we expand on the special power that one gets from shared dynamic HTML supported by modern Netscape and Microsoft browsers. 2) PowerPoint exported to the web using Microsoft’s Internet Assistant and modest restructuring (with an existing WiseGuy filter described below) to better define object components (labeled by Component_DOM). 3) PowerPoint accessed via COM components, which allows one to properly define a base object model. WebWisdom’s web-linked database technology allows one to export this to the web using XML templates. One can also integrate material from PowerPoint with other web components such as audio-video renditions of the teacher and class discussions. This approach also gives one a clean object structure defined in XML rather than the heuristic choices that need to be made in interpreting the HTML tags in the cases 1) and 2) above. The XML version allows support of the multi- resolution images and universal access discussed above. 4) Optionally, WebWisdom allows one to elaborate the curricula structure seen in page types 1) through 3) in various ways, such as through the addition of glossaries, notes and quizzes in fashions popularized by tools like WebCT. This is supported by WebWisdom using modern XML, dynamic HTML, and Java technology. We allow both database repositories and dynamic web pages to link in such material where one can choose between either independent views or shared display between teacher and students. As always this material supports either synchronous or asynchronous views of curricula. 5) WebWisdom fully supports shared Java applets used in some of the best interactive educational curricula. Special capabilities include the capability called WebWisdom Active Objects, which can embed such shared applets in web pages rather than as identified shared applications within TangoInteractive’s control application. Authoring of such shared applets is simplified if they are constructed according to the Javabean design frameworks. Then Tangobean technology automates the sharing of events represented by the standard Javabean rules. 6) There are other important authoring systems such as Macromedia Authorware, which is quite popular and can be very successful if substantial courseware effort is invested. We are currently investigating support of synchronous sharing of such material in TangoInteractive. TangoInteractive is uniquely suited for sharing web material as it has a native JavaScript interface, which can access the full W3C DOM structure of material exported to the web. For instance, we can identify the images contained in a document and so manage the rendering of these in the modality required by the user for universal access. TangoInteractive also captures all events in a page and so precisely shares all form input and output. This allows one to share complex web pages, where the form data controls the action of the server to which form data is submitted. This allows the sharing of databases and simulations controlled by forms. A simple powerful capability of TangoInteractive’s JavaScript interface allows it trap events controlling dynamic HTML. As described above under current focus the standard WebWisdom release uses this to add shared cursors (pointers) to most HTML pages and any page gotten by exporting PowerPoint to the web. This is naturally very useful when teaching as it allows a sharp definition of the material being discussed. Note that WebWisdom assumes that one needs to combine both database backended and conventional web page curricula. The former is most appropriate for long term storage and access to large-scale curriculum archives. The simple web page is best for the harried faculty preparing material at the last moment! This mode can be enhanced dynamically by accessing them through WiseGuy server filters that WebWisdom supplies to automatically add features to general web pages such as IMS metadata and the shared pointer discussed above. Alternatively this filter can be used in batch mode to permanently enhance material on a Web site. This can be particularly valuable in cases where material is to be used standalone from CDROM’s in circumstances where the backend database is not appropriate.