Collaborative Learning through Flexible Web CVE - Teaching through Multi-User Virtual Environments - page 488

Figure 8. Authoring Process

• Definition of the entities populating virtual

world and of the collaborative metaphors
governing interactions within the CVE,
both mapped through a XML description
to generate a Session Prototype

• Cooperative metaphor selection: defining

which cooperative elements will be active
for each particular context, user and entity.

Even if the described authoring process fol-
lows a well-known workflow (Figure 8) already
studied and optimized during previous similar
projects, it however involves several actors, each
one with different skills and technical capabilities.
While it does not seem effective to implement a
proprietary 3D design application as there many
commercial suites (3Ds, Maya, etc.) being able to
satisfy 3D Designer needs, it is indeed necessary
to design an authoring tool in order to simplify the
process of session generation, as the support to
the XML instance coding (in the Session Instance
and Prototype Configuration ) cannot be simply
obtained with a generic XML manager and parser
available on the market.

• Fine tuning of the session, choosing of the

specific contents to be shown, avatar skin
and name, etc. in order to define a specific
Session Instance.

On the other hand the workflow to define
cooperative scenario consists of:

• Users' roles definition: participating to

cooperation.

• Context definition: intended as different

3D worlds' environments included in the
same navigation environments.

• Entities definition: included in each

context.

Results

• Cooperative elements: selection as basic

mean of interaction between users.

WT04 has been applied in two projects, Learn-
ing@Europe and Stori@Lombardia involving