CaMILE

Anchored Collaborative Learning Environments

CaMILE: Collaborative and Multimedia Interactive Learning Environment

Directed by Mark Guzdial
College of Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology
EduTech Institute
GVU Center

RECENT PUBLICATIONS NOW AVAILABLE! See References at bottom of page.

CaMILE is now available for downloading! The license for educational institutions is free. Please visit the CaMILE Request page. Bug fixes are being discovered -- please visit for updates.

CaMILE (Collaborative and Multimedia Interactive Learning Environment) is a Web-based collaboration tool for use by students to encourage learning. The most significant features of CaMILE that make it effective for learning are:

CaMILE prompts students to identify the kind of notes they are contributing to the collaboration and suggests things to say in notes of those kinds. The goal is to encourage metacognition in students.
CaMILE notes are each directly addressable (via a URL). The advantage is that links to a particular thread of CaMILE discussion can be added to any Web document. We have found this to be particularly effective in providing students something to talk about. We refer to this capability as anchored collaboration.
CaMILE supports upload of documents as attachments to notes (on Macintosh computers.)

Most developments in anchored collaborative learning environments have now moved to Swikis. You can visit a Swiki at http://minnow.cc.gatech.edu/swiki. Swiki is based on the Pluggable Web Server.

Development of and research with CaMILE is a project sponsored by ARPA, the National Science Foundation, the EduTech Institute, and GTE Foundation and directed by Dr. Mark Guzdial of to create a collaborative environment for learning. There is a new Mac version available (Mac-Mounted CaMILE), and a cross-platform version (that can be served from any computer) is in development (see Pluggable WebServer). The original version of CaMILE was based on the Apple Macintosh and was developed by Mark Guzdial.

Using CaMILE

The CaMILE "home" looks like a typical newsgroup. Threads of discussion are reflected in the indentation on the page. (Newer versions of CaMILE also have facilities for filtering some of the data on the page and facilitating users finding responses to their notes.)

An individual note is selected by clicking on any note link from the home page, or clicking on a note link at the bottom of a note. A note indicates its type, its author, title, and body, but can also contain links to media.

When a user indicates that they want to create a new note, they are prompted to identify the type of their note. Is this a New Idea? A Rebuttal? An Alternative to someone else's idea? The note types are modifiable for each instance of CaMILE. For example, in a class on object-oriented modeling and design, the note types include Analysis Issue, Design Issue, and Programming Issue.

Users create notes on a page where they can also link to media (which can be switched off for individual instances of CaMILE.) When users choose to link to media, on a Macintosh, a file selection dialog appears. The selected file is uploaded to the CaMILE Server which then connects the file to the note with the relevant icon type.

Users of CaMILE

WebCaMILE (versus Mac-based CaMILE) has already been put to a wide range of uses:

Students in Atlanta-area middle schools are using CaMILE to share solutions to interesting problems (like how to clean up Atlanta's water supply after the 96 Olympics), as part of an EduTech Institute and ARPA sponsored project.
Students in Germany are using CaMILE to share information about the galaxy, and in particular, sharing their analyses of images collected from observatories at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratories.
Georgia Tech students in Chemical Engineering, Sustainable Development, Civil Engineering, and Computer Science are using CaMILE to discuss assignments, conduct virtual study groups, review for examinations, etc.
Graduate classes meeting on the same topic were synchronized between Northwestern University and Georgia Tech where communication between the two classes was facilitated using CaMILE.

References on CaMILE

http://guzdial.cc.gatech.edu/papers/infoecol/ Guzdial, M. (1997). Information ecology of collaborations in educational settings: Influence of tool, CSCL'97 (To appear). Toronto.

http://guzdial.cc.gatech.edu/papers/lessons/ Guzdial, M., C. Hmelo, et al. (1997). Integrating and Guiding Collaboration: Lessons learned in computer-supported collaboration learning research at Georgia Tech. CSCL'97. Toronto, Ontario. To appear.

http://guzdial.cc.gatech.edu/papers/oopsla97ed/ Guzdial, M. (1997). Technological support for an apprenticeship in object-oriented design and programming. Proceedings of the OOPSLA'97 Educators Symposium. Atlanta, GA, ACM.

Guzdial, M., J.L. Kolodner, et al., Computer support for learning through complex problem-solving. Communications of the ACM, 1996. In press.

Guzdial, M., Rappin, N., & Carlson, D. (1995). Collaborative and multimedia interactive learning environment for engineering education. In Proceedings of the ACM Symposium on Applied Computing 1995 (pp. 5-9). Nashville, TN: ACM Press.

Guzdial, M., D. Carlson, and J. Turns, Facilitating learning design with software-realized scaffolding for collaboration, In Proceedings of the Frontiers in Education Conference. 1995, American Society for Engineering Education.

Rappin, N., Guzdial, M., & Vanegas, J. A. (1994). Supporting distinct roles in a multimedia database. In Conference Proceedings of the Third Annual Conference on Multimedia in Education & Industry (pp. 202-204). Charleston, SC: Association for Applied Interactive Multimedia.

Turns, J., Mistree, F., Rosen, D., Allen, J., Guzdial, M., & Carlson, D. (1995). A collaborative multimedia design learning simulator. ED-Media. Austria: AACE.

Vanegas, J., & Guzdial, M. (1995). A Collaborative and Multimedia Interactive Learning Environment for Engineering Education in Sustainable Development and Technology. In Second Congress on Computing in Civil Engineering, . Atlanta, GA: American Society of Civil Engineers.