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Project Leader:
Su-Shing Chen, CECS
An Object-Oriented (OO) framework for digital libraries, human end-user collaboration and their integration has been proposed in our earlier papers. The information space of digital libraries is integrated with the digital shared workspace of human end-user collaboration. A digital shared workspace is where coordination of computers and collaboration of human end-users take place for a variety of networked applications and services. In a digital shared workspace which spans the group memory space of many computers over a wide area network, shared multimedia objects will be annotated, applied, created, consumed, indexed, and stored. The proposed OO framework of digital libraries and human end-user collaboration depends on an Information Encapsulation Principle extending the Data Encapsulation Principle of object-oriented programming to information access and utilization. Information is captured as information objects and collaborated information is represented as shared objects. In this framework, information access - query, search, and retrieval - is represented by well-defined operations on the object hierarchies in the information space and the digital shared workspace. There will be three alternative kinds of operations: complex objects, functional mappings and intelligent agent architectures. Information utilization, including collaboration, is also represented by the three kinds of operations.
The research develops a common content-based indexing scheme of information objects in digital libraries and shared objects in digital shared workspaces. Content-based indexing in digital libraries is an important ongoing research issue. Although there are many results, it is still a very difficult issue because of the complexity and scalability of information content. Our content-based indexing relies on conceptual graphs of Meta information. These graphs sufficiently represent the information content of objects in digital libraries and shared workspace. Our framework provides a formalism to control, emulate, manage, model, and simulate the information access and utilization process and the human end-user behavior in the digital shared workspace. It helps to understand human collaborative learning and learner-system-information interaction, and serve as a means of validating evaluation field data of human learning.
The collaborative learning environment is called the "Classroom of the 21st Century" in the Department of Computer Engineering and Computer Science. It develops a large-scale networked information system for project-oriented undergraduate education in computer science and engineering with the state-of-the-art facility (e.g., video-conferencing, white boards, DCOM and CORBA-based courseware, hypertext-based learning tools, annotation and evaluation software tools). The vision of the College of Engineering is to develop project-oriented undergraduate engineering education for ABET and CSAB accreditation in the 21st Century. The responsibility of the department is to develop the component in computer science and engineering. Due to the unique role of our department in modern computer-based engineering education, what is developed in our project-oriented undergraduate courses will be highly relevant to other engineering departments. Project-oriented courses will provide research/education training for our undergraduate students in computer science and computer engineering programs. This will also provide integrated research/education opportunities for our faculty members, because their research will be directly connected to their teaching. Project-oriented collaborative courseware will be indexed, managed and stored in a networked repository of our digital library of educational materials. Students will become not only users, but also developers of the "Classroom of the 21st Century" collaborative learning system.
Although much of the digital library development and high speed network service is local to MU, our collaboration with Bruce Schatz and H. Chen of the NSF/DARPA/NASA Digital Library Group at NCSA will be essential as a source of experience and expertise to be exchanged. As the project evolves, the necessity of vBNS access to NCSA repositories and collaborators will be critical. The objective is to interactively access and utilize their Digital Engineering Library at the University of Illinois by MU engineering students.
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