Graaasp collaboration environment

Graaasp and 3A Model

Graaasp can be described as a Web 2.0 application that can serve simultaneously as an aggregation, contextualization, discussion, and networking platform, a shared asset repository, or an activity management system. The structure of Graaasp relies on the extension of the 3A interaction model [1], which is intended for designing and describing social and collaborative learning environments. The 3A model consists of three main constructs or entities: Actors represent entities capable of initiating an event in a collaborative environment, such as regular users or virtual agents. Actors create collaboration spaces where they conduct personal and group Activities to reach specific objectives. In each of these activities, actors can take different roles, each of which consisting of a label and an associated set of rights. In addition, Actors produce, edit, share and annotate Assets in order to meet activities objectives. Assets can consist of simple text files, RSS feeds, wikis, videos or audio files. A fourth structural entity Application is added into the model to describe widget or gadget that can be installed and executed within the Web pages. Applications can be any tools created or linked by actors.

 The user interface of Graaasp is illustrated in Fig. 1. It mainly consists of two parts: the focal part on the left side and the contextual part on the right side. The focal partshows the entity that is currently selected by the user. It can be a human (actor), an activity (space), an asset or an application (tool). The contextual partconsists of the four columns of items, each of which represents one type of entities (actors, assets, activity spaces, tools) linked to the focal entity.

Core Features in Graaasp

Collaboration

The design of Graaasp follows a bottom-up approach that releases organizational and hierarchical constraints in its structure. Group activities (spaces) can be constructed either with a flat or with a hierarchical structure. In a flat structured group activity, every member shares equal rights so that no one acts as a supervisor who superintends the learning process. While in a top-down hierarchical structured group activity, the rights of group members vary depending on their different roles. Both tutors and students are entitled to create group activities of any user-defined types like forum, discussion, course, project, and so on. For instance, tutors can create a course activity for organizing a particular course, while students are also able to create a project activity for coordinating their course project [2].Within a given space, users can post, share, and link learning resources and tools, constructing personalized learning process. Spaces allow learners to organize learning activities, aggregate data and resources, and collaborate with each other.

Aggregation

Through a bookmarklet,Graaasp allows learners to import resources and people from other social platforms, such as a video from YouTube, a slidecast from SlideShare, a book description from Amazon, and so on. Learners can bring useful data from heterogeneous sources into a single place so that they can easily organize, share, rate, and comment. This feature provides a convenient way for learners to grab, aggregate, and organize different learning resources, which facilitates constructing their personal learning environments.

 Recommendation

Based on the underlying 3A social graph and users’ explicit and implicit trust opinions, Graaasp offers contextualized and personalized recommendation of people, resources, and tools. It helps learners to find suitable people to collaborate with and trustworthy resources to learn from, which sustains self-directed learning activities in open learning environments.

 Mashup

Graaasp can also serve as a widget container in which widgets are able to run and communicate with each other. It is worth mentioning that, Graaasp supports building Metawidget [3] that has several widgets running inside. Users are allowed to find a template from public widget repositories and define their personalized Web environments according to their different goals. This feature provides users with flexibility in choosing a Web platform in which they prefer to work. It offers both a way to change visual representation of data and actions user can accomplish with this data.

[1] S. El Helou, N. Li, and D. Gillet, “The 3A interaction model: towards bridging the gap between formal and informal learning”, 3^rd International Conference on Advances in Computer-Human Interactions, pp. 179-184, 2010.

[2] N. Li, C. Ullrich, S. El Helou, and D. Gillet, “Using Social Software for Teamwork and Collaborative Project Management in Higher Education”, Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS), Springer, pp. 161-170, 2010.

[3] M. Blattner, E. Glinert, J. Jorge, and G. Ormsby,“Metawidgets:towards a theory of multimodal interface design”, ComputerSoftware and Applications Conference, COMPSAC’92, Sixteenth Annual International, pp. 115 –120, 1992.