Scientific and technological objectives of the project and state of the art

The overall objective of the Hyper-Learning project is to create an advanced e-learning system for the humanities that will develop and enhance critical thinking skills.

In the area of our concern, there are at present two types of software available: Learning Management Systems and Document Repositories.

In the area of document repositories many tools are available, including various implementations of Open Archives, which are the most interesting for the Hyper-Learning Project. Even this kind of software, however, merely furnishes a system for archiving documents and establishes only very weak links between the various documents that have been stored.

In the area of Learning Management Systems, there are various international standards that define the notion of a Learning Object (IEEE P1484.12, ADL SCORM, IMS). But these standards usually have limited flexibility, allowing the Learning Management System to make use of the Learning Object in only one pre-defined conceptual grid.

Now, a genuine e-learning system for the humanities must be able not only to facilitate the rote learning of facts and figures, but above all it must develop critical thinking skills. Critical thinking means knowing how to analyze structural relationships between objects of study and being able to consider objects from multiple perspectives. In brief, critical thinking means having the capacity to apply various interpretive grids to the same object and its constituent parts.

The humanities are clearly in need of a new type of learning system. This system, which we hope to develop under the name Hyper-Learning, integrates:

1)   A highly structured document repository system that is able to establish relationships between Research Objects. To this end, Hyper-Learning has developed the Pearl/Pearl-Diver Model (PPDM).

2)   A more comprehensive notion Learning Objects as objects which maintain a constant reference to the research activity that generates them and to the various conceptual grids used by that research: Research and Learning Objects (RLOs).

3)   The capacity to visualize relations between Research and Learning Objects through the use of sophisticated navigation systems that enable new representations of knowledge and that thereby constitute new educational methodologies: Dynamic Contextualisation, 3D Virtual Learning Environments.

The Hyper-Learning Project will improve the state of the art by developing a distributed and semantically structured web-based e-learning system that will be disseminated as open source software.

The design of the Hyper-Learning Platforms and the tools they provide make it easy for scholars to establish complex and structured relationships among the materials, or in other words, to define a context for each object produced. They will be implemented in a distributed architecture for providing tools and services as well as for the storage of material produced by these tools and services. The distributed approach offers further advantages in terms of interoperability and the scalability of the system.

To attain this objective, we will mobilize resources drawn from both computer science research and technology development, and we will also establish a first core of Virtual Collaborative Learning Communities in order to tailor the system to the needs of actual users.

 

The research component of the Hyper-Learning infrastructure will work on the following three themes:

1)   A functional unified approach to server- and client-side programming

2)   Object persistent data repositories with distributed updates

3)   Statically typed generation and transformation of HTML and XML data

This research project, which will proceed in tandem with the technology development component, will benefit from the experience acquired in the course of the construction of the Hyper-Learning Platforms and the Hyper-Learning Network (see below). The research work will produce a programming language, which will be used first of all for the development of the web services of the Hyper-Learning Network. More generally this language, accompanied by its integrated programming environments, will permit the application of the functional approach to the development of all kinds of web applications.

 

The technology development component of the Hyper-Learning infrastructure will concentrate on the following four applications:

1)   A contextualized and highly available local data repository model (Hyper-Learning Platform).

2)   A semi-decentralized peer-to-peer network of XML based web services that collaborates in a virtual, distributed and semantically structured Hyper-Learning Network.

3)   An open, standard software (Hyper-Learning Server) that allows anyone to easily install, configure and maintain a node (which functions both as service provider and as a data repository) within the Hyper-Learning Network.

4)   An advanced distributed 3D engine usable to develop virtual learning environment interfaces.

The integration of a 3D engine enable educators to access the Research and Learning Objects in conceptual grids that open into three dimensions, thus providing enormous expressive and educational potential.

Hyper-Learning will face a twofold technological challenge. First, to develop a system that consolidates all the advantages derived from the close integration of learning management systems and document repositories. Second, to design this system not simply as a web application, but in the form of a peer-to-peer network composed of web services and distributed data sources which will constitute a unified, scalable, interoperable and collaborative learning environment.

 

The creation of such a technological structure presupposes a profound understanding of the exigencies of teaching and research. Furthermore, it requires having available a critical mass of teachers and students working together from the beginning on a certain number scholastic enterprises. In addition to our technological work, therefore, we will also establish a core of Virtual Collaborative Learning Communities (VCLCs).

Educators and scholars often regard e-learning systems as little more than expensive, ineffective toys. It is therefore necessary, in the context of creating the system, to also create the legal, academic, and scientific framework necessary to enable scholars, educators, and students to fully exploit these new tools in the daily practice of research and teaching, in the course of developing curricula, and in the process of building a career. For this reason, the platform we intend to develop must be immediately applicable to a related group of authors who have contributed to forming the culture of Europe, and must be tested for its effectiveness in forming communities of scholars and students who will profit from working and learning in a cooperative, cumulative, and delocalized environment. To address these needs, we have launched three initiatives: OpenKnowledge licenses (for legal issues), VCLC Associations and the European Internet Academy of Sciences (to provide the academic framework), and Internet Peer Review (to insure scientific integrity).

From the outset the Virtual Collaborative Learning Communities will play a fundamental role in the conception of the Hyper-Learning Platforms. Starting from the model proposed by the pilot project, the VCLCs will provide the necessary specifications for constructing e-learning systems that respond effectively to the exigencies of humanities research and education.

Simultaneously, they will make it possible to test the systems in “sizable field experiments” over the course of their development. From a pedagogical perspective, this will permit us to hone and test specific teaching methodologies, and still more significantly, from a technological perspective it will enable us to conduct hands-on, concrete evaluations of the scalability of our distributed architecture in at least a dozen different nodes.

Building VCLCs in conjunction with the software platforms is also the only way to insure that these new technologies will have an impact on the actual practices of research and learning. Each virtual community must attain a critical mass that will establish it as an indispensable educational resource within its field of study. This will be possible if the e-learning platform succeeds in integrating access to primary sources with the publication of top quality scholarship, and if it is overseen by an editorial board of respected and established scholars. The entire group of virtual communities together must in turn attain a critical mass relative to the humanities as a whole. In this way, and thanks also to the free distribution of the software needed to activate a new node in the network, this group will act as a multiplier and will have a structuring effect on the European Research Area.

The impact on research practices will also assure the durability of these e-learning environments after the initial period of European funding. Taking into consideration the influence of the prestigious European Academy of Sciences at UNESCO, which will be coordinating the collective of virtual communities, and above all the internal logic of the project – the virtuous circle of growth that will evolve within each community (see B.4.2) – we are confident that the system will become self-sustaining. In point of fact, the European countries already finance research and teaching in the humanities that produce large quantities of good scholarly and educational material every year. But regrettably, this material is not adequately disseminated. In the natural sciences, this is due to the existence of a monopoly market. In the human sciences, by contrast, there is no market. The majority of the material remains in the desk drawers (or on the hard disks) of educators and researchers. Little is published (only that which crosses the threshold of profitability), and very little is disseminated.

Our objective is to develop the technological capacities, and to study the legal, organizational, and pedagogical conditions that will optimize the dissemination and teaching of European culture, making the Web not merely a source of information, but the medium for the training and the daily work for all researchers, teachers, and students in the humanities.