FRIDAY KEYNOTE ADDRESS
Virtual Teams + Virtual Projects = Real Learning
Abstract
LearningWorks is a learning environment in which to explore ideas about
computing and software system architectures, making use of a
programming language that supports object modeling with dynamic
modeling and libraries of selected objects. The environment supports
the ability to create, access, and explore curriculum that emphasizes
individual and group software construction activities. LearningWorks
consists of four frameworks: a LearningBook presentation and
interaction framework that forms the basic user model, a programming
framework that permits customization of the toolset and library of
reusable assets based on learner skill level, an authoring framework
for creating LearningBooks, and a team communications framework that
supports real-time network-based exchange of software under development
by a team of students.
The curriculum we designed [Goldberg, 1995] includes a team project.
Students, who may reside in geographically separated locations, can
form teams and work together on the Internet to do this project. They
can share their work by sharing LearningBooks containing the work of
each subteam. The pages of each subteams book contain code that
fulfills the subteams system requirements, test suite, documentation,
and example uses. The peer-to-peer communications framework that
supports real-time sharing of LearningBooks is based on SPLINE,
developed at the Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratory [Anderson,
1996; Barrus, 1996].
The ability to learn good software development practices depends on a
students ability to put theory to practice, and to do so often and with
diversity. We are proposing that one way to offer the opportunity for
such practice is to find potential team members on the Internet (as
well as within ones own classes or school), and to learn how to set up
an effective development process where these team members work together
despite potentially diverse backgrounds and project management skills
or expectations. To support faculty interested in trying out this idea,
we have build and are offering LearningWorks and its curriculum as
freeware available on
our Web site
(http://sumeru.stanford.edu/learningworks).
References
- Anderson, David B., Barrus, John W., Brogan, D., Casey, M., McKeown,
S., Sterns, I., Waters, Richard C., and Yerazunis, W.
Diamond Park and
Spline: A Social Virtual Reality with 3D Animation, Spoken Interaction,
and Runtime Modifiability,
Mitsubishi Electric Laboratories, TR9602,
1996.
-
Barrus, John W., Waters, Richard C., and Anderson, David B.
Locales: Supporting Large Multi-user Virtual Environments,
IEEE Computer Graphics & Applications, November, 1996.
-
Goldberg, Adele.
OOPSLA 95 Keynote, Addendum to the Proceedings of the
ACM OOPSLA Conference, 1995.
Biographical Sketch
Dr. Adele Goldberg is currently a founder of Neometron, Inc., a Texas-based
company working towards Intranet support for self-managed teams.
Previously, she served as Chairman of the Board and a founder of
ParcPlace-Digitalk, Inc. until April, 1996. ParcPlace created application
development environments based on object-oriented technology and sold to
corporate programmers. Prior to the creation of ParcPlace, Adele received a
Ph.D. in Information Science from the University of Chicago and spent 14
years as researcher and laboratory manager of Xerox Palo Alto Research
Center. Solely and with others, Adele wrote the definitive books on the
Smalltalk-80 programming system and has authored numerous papers on project
management and analysis methodology using object-oriented technology.
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