1. Supporting Social Awareness in Education with Collaborative Virtual Environments
Ekaterina Prasolova-Førland
Department of Computer and Information Science
Norwegian University of Science and Technology

2. Social awareness Learning is essentially a social activity
To be able to function effectively in both working and social activities, the students need to constantly maintain a high degree of social awareness.
Social awareness is awareness of the social situation in a group or community in a shared environment: people’s roles, activities, positions, resources, responsibilities, social connections and group processes, with a time-span from a short-term overview of the social situation in a community, to a long-term memory of a community’s social life.

3. Problem definition
Empirical study: students experience problems with acquiring enough social awareness in their everyday life and work, especially concerning other classes
Problems with ”traditional” tools (ICQ, BSCW, etc):
no support for “weak ties”
cannot convey the visual information and provide support for “chance encounters”
do not provide sufficient awareness about the social structures, activities, roles etc
human cognition and memory are essentially 3D, as opposed to most existing CSCW applications

4. Collaborative Virtual Environments
CVEs offer interesting potentials for social awareness support:
graphical cues about different social aspects
casual encounters across distances
alternative space and 3D information structuring
CVEs can be used to support communities of learners by supporting community building, communication and information sharing and providing an alternative space structure. Can be characterized in terms of learner, place, artifacts

5. Research questions
How should collaborative virtual environments be designed in order to support social awareness in educational settings?
Q1What is social awareness and what are the associated mechanisms in an educational context?
Q2 What possibilities do CVEs offer in general for social awareness support in educational settings?
Q3 What are the requirements for educational CVEs supporting social awareness?
Q4 To what extent would CVEs designed according to these requirements contribute to an increased social awareness among students?

6. Classification of spatial metaphors in educational CVEs
Resemblance of physical space: the virtual environment provides an analogy to a part of the real world:
Buildings and campuses
Frontiers
Virtual places for specific purposes:
Meeting places
Information spaces
Virtual stages
Demonstrations and exhibitions
Workspaces

7. Theoretical background
Activity theory
Considered as new theoretical framework for CSCL [Gifford et al, 1999] since it emphasizes the social nature of work and learning
Activity is mediated by cultural artifacts
Main components: cultural tools, object, division of labor, community, rules, subject
Learning communities and groups
In learning communities members have different roles as master and apprentice and there is a development and progression through these roles, along the learning trajectories
Main concepts:participation and reification, forming a shared repertoire (Wenger, 1999)

8. Requirements: learner, place, artifacts
The representation and embodiment of the learner: should reflect his/her movement along the learning and participation trajectory, facilitate communication, navigation and artifact manipulation
The place: should provide framework for activities and have a dynamic structure reflecting the structure of the community, supporting a flexible usage of different parts for different roles. The outlook should reflect the spirit of the community and groups
Artifacts: should comprise a shared repertoire of the community, with different types for accomplishing of various tasks and possibilities to leave activity traces

9. Viras Viras: a world developed with Active Worlds
Learners: represented by avatars, objects they create and the history of communications
Place: based on the metaphor of archipelago:
Islands connected by teleportation links, bridges
Users dynamically create new constructions and modify provided templates (houses, islands)
Artifacts: learners leave their traces by creating personal artifacts where they visit and “live” or modify available templates (signs, picture holders, buildings etc)

10. Experiment
The world has been tested by around 50 students taking CSCW course during a 1 month period
The students’ task was to create personal and group houses and islands, using as a starting point a pre-developed structure and a number of pre-developed artifacts and then evaluate the system
Data collection
Logging of chat and building activities
Student evaluation, questionnaires, interviews

14. Lessons learned
Deployment. There should be a more flexible framework for situating the usage of the system according to the changing needs of the learning communities and groups (i.e. storing and exhibiting of virtual constructions rather than online meetings)
Awareness mapping. There is a need for better structuring and overview of the world
Virtual places. There is a need for easier and more intuitive building, including pre-built houses, islands and other constructions for different purposes that are easy to put in place and customize

15. Space as artifacts
Extended definition of artifacts in the context of CVEs: tools used for mediating activities and communication and include objects, dynamic spatial constructions and user representations (avatars) to the extent they can be used for such mediation
Characterization: Outlook/structure and role
Different perspectives on artifacts:
Activity theory and learning communities
Distributed cognition
Coordination mechanisms
Revision of requirements

16. Redesign: Place repository
Social life and memory are tied to space
The places serving as triggers and repositories of community memory in real life cannot serve as a permanent reference
Requirements:
A set of coherent building blocks and templates
Effective indexing and mapping between virtual places and a user’s internal “awareness” map
Design
Virtual places: building blocks/templates, personal places, activities
Mapping and indexing: different possible metaphors

17. Place repository: a scenario
A student group creates a virtual project presentation:
They decide to create personal places, a place for work-related meetings and a “party” place
They retrieve island, house, “exhibition” and “party” templates, position them as needed and customize them (personal pictures, links, objects)
While working, the students “download” places with last-year student projects, to see how things were done and who can be contacted for help
The project, “party” and personal places with traces can be saved as histories, group activities...

18. On-going and future work
Re-design and re-implementation of Viras as place repository
New case study
integration of such a repository into current learning practices and its impact on the social awareness of the community using it
feasibility of the use of such a repository and CVEs in general for social awareness support with current technological limitations
Conclusions
Results vs. research questions and limitations
Directions for future work