Uwe Sinha

Virtual Room Concepts for Cooperative, Scientific Work

Cooperative knowledge spaces offer new potentials for experimental and scientific work in the current fields of engineering and natural sciences. Widely accepted content management systems often only provide simple content in combination with communication tools; cooperative knowledge spaces are able to project the concept of natural cooperative work onto virtual rooms. In this article we introduce our concept of virtual rooms for scientific and educational work. We describe requirements for complex cooperative work in virtual knowledge spaces where the rooms are arranged in a dynamic, heterogeneous network and incorporate experimental laboratory equipment, shared whiteboards and version‐controlled documents. We developed this concept in the context of our project ViCToR‐Spaces (Virtual Cooperation in Teaching and Research for Mathematics and Natural Sciences) and are currently implementing some of the parts of the concept. Index Terms ‐ cooperative knowledge spaces, virtual and remote laboratories, virtual rooms, cooperative education and work

Embedding virtual and remote experiments into a cooperative knowledge space

Today, experimental environments and setups in natural sciences and engineering are neither available sufficiently, nor accessible enough to cover the broad demand. Yet, they form an essential part of the scientific methodology within the technological disciplines. Additionally, the ability to cooperate and work in teams when performing experiments is crucial. By integrating experimental setups into a virtual cooperative knowledge space, availability and accessibility can be enhanced for a wide range of people, working individually or in groups, making them independent of limitations in time, budget or access to classical laboratories. This article describes a SOAP-based architecture by which this objective can be achieved, and which is currently being implemented for CURE, a room-based cooperative knowledge space platform developed at FernUniversitaet Hagen.

Victor-Spaces: Virtual and Remote Experiments in Cooperative Knowledge Spaces

Cooperative knowledge spaces create new potentials for the experimental fields in natural sciences and engineering because they enhance the accessibility of experimental setups through virtual laboratories and remote technology, opening them for collaborative and distributed usage. A concept for extending existing virtual knowledge spaces for the means of the technological disciplines (“ViCToR-Spaces” – Virtual Cooperation in Teaching and Research for Mathematics, Natural Sciences and Engineering) is presented. The integration of networked virtual laboratories and remote experiments will be described.

Networked Experiments and Scientific Resource Sharing in Cooperative Knowledge Spaces

Cooperative knowledge spaces create new potentials for the experimental fields in natural sciences and engineering because they enhance the accessibility of experimental setups through virtual laboratories and remote technology, opening them for collaborative and distributed usage. A concept for extending existing virtual knowledge spaces for the means of the technological disciplines (ViCToR-Spaces- Virtual Cooperation in Teaching and Research for Mathematics, Natural Sciences and Engineering) is presented. The integration of networked virtual laboratories and remote experiments (NanoLab Approach), as well as an approach to community-driven content sharing and content development within virtual knowledge spaces (NanoWiki) are described.

Networked Experiments and Scientific Resource Sharing in Cooperative Knowledge Spaces.

Cooperative knowledge spaces create new potentials for the experimental fields in natural sciences and engineering because they enhance the accessibility of experimental setups through virtual laboratories and remote technology, opening them for collaborative and distributed usage. A concept for extending existing virtual knowledge spaces for the means of the technological disciplines (VICToR-Spaces-virtual cooperation in teaching and research for mathematics, natural sciences and engineering) is presented. The integration of networked virtual laboratories and remote experiments (NanoLab Approach), as well as an approach to community-driven content sharing and content development within virtual knowledge spaces (NanoWiki) are described