Matthias Ehmann

Online Communication and Collaboration - A General Approach

During realization of an eLearning platform, we discovered that there is a general interest in online communication and collaboration tools in different fields. There were frequent requests for adaptations of our system to further use cases beyond eLearning. In this paper, we present a general approach for online communication and collaboration which is supported by an especially developed platform. This platform offers tools for audio and video communication together with several collaboration tools as well as advanced customizability in order to realize special requirements. To achieve general applicability of our approach, we identify general requirements of several use cases including eLearning. This helps us to develop a generic communication and collaboration model which is the basis of our concept. In this paper, we present the model as well as the architecture.

Online Teaching in an Electronic Education Environment

For our project “Informatik@School” we introduced a didactical concept that is based on individual and cooperative problem-oriented teaching and learning. To apply this concept we practice an approach between pure e-learning and blended learning. From the technical point of view we need a software environment that fulfills the demands of our didactical concept. In this paper we present our e-learning platform “Electronic Education Environment”. First we illustrate the results of a requirements review concerning different areas. We explain the necessity for the development of a new e-learning software framework. In the main part we show the details of our Electronic Learning Environment together with use cases for students and advisors. We discuss the difficulties and their solutions of a network based e-learning application in a heterogeneous network structure. Finally an outlook to future development potentialities is given.