Macintosh-based CaMILE
The original version of CaMILE was a Macintosh-based program, rather than a WWW-based version. The below describes that version:
Macintosh-based Collaborative and Multimedia Interactive Learning
Environment (CaMILE) provides both (1) a forum for sharing, discussing, and
reflecting and (2) several information bases to aid students in locating and
making sense of multimedia information. The project was begun by Professor
Jorge Vanegas of Civil & Environmental Engineering to create an
environment in which students could learn the complex topic of Sustainable
Development through discussion and connection to diverse media. When the
prototype was created, the Mechanical Engineering Team of Drs. Janet
Allen, David Rosen, and Farrokh Mistree recognized that
CaMILE also served the needs of their students doing collaborative design.
Students working on the project include
- David Carlson (Computing), who created the CaMILE Server and developed
the WWW-based version of CaMILE, WebCaMILE.
- Noel Rappin (Computing), developed the MediaBase of CaMILE and is
developing the Macintosh-based composer for WebCaMILE.
- Jennifer Turns (ISyE) who ran the ME course in which CaMILE was used
during the 94-95 academic year.
- Undergraduates Jason Higginbotham, Eric Witham, and Richard Hamm who
helped run the course, create materials, and gather evaluation data.
Figure
1: CaMILE NoteBase. A student is entering a Comment note (bottom
window) into the discussion (top window). The student has annotated the note
with a QuickTime movie and a Microsoft Word document. A list of suggestions
(upper right) appears which is associated with the Comment note type.
Figure 2: Before a student can enter a note into the CaMILE NoteBase, the
student must identify the type of note to be written.
The core of CaMILE is a collaborative NoteBase where students can post
multimedia notes in group discussions. Notes are mostly text but include
multimedia annotations in the margin. The multimedia margin links can refer to
pictures, sound, spreadsheets, word-processors -- any kind of document on the
student's own disk or available somewhere on the network. The NoteBase
provides a structure for the notes such that each new note is a response to
something already said in a discussion. When a student reading through a
discussion finds a note that she wishes to respond to, she may create a new
note that she must specifically identify as a Question, a Comment, a Rebuttal,
an Alternative, or so on. Her new note may refer to a wide variety of
multimedia resources. Research in cognitive science suggests that asking
students to (1) articulate their points in words and media, (2) relate their
points to one another, and (3) explicitly identify the kind of point
that they're making leads to a powerful and usable form of learning.
Along with the NoteBase, CaMILE provides several resource collections which
students can review for more information on a topic or to gather evidence for a
note to add to a discussion.
- The MediaBase(created by graduate student Noel Rappin), is a
multimedia database which collects a wide variety of media into nodes
(text with multimedia annotations, like a note from the NoteBase) and
collections of related nodes in paths. Students can explore the
MediaBase along paths to find related media on a topic. In addition, the
MediaBase provides guides, anthropomorphic agents who comment upon nodes
in the MediaBase from their point of view. For example, the MediaBase might
contain a path of nodes that describe the relationship between humans and their
environment. Guides might include agents reflecting an ecologist's point of
view, an engineer's point of view, an economist's point of view, and a
developing nation's point of view. Nodes and media from the MediaBase can be
connected to notes in CaMILE's NoteBase. Thus, the MediaBase encourages
students to explore a topic in multiple media and view alternative (and often
conflicting) perspectives on a subject. Learning to explore alternative
understandings and explanations is an important problem-solving skill for
students.
- CaMILE's Electronic Book (Ebook) format provides a mechanism for
linking existing textbook material into CaMILE. Much of the information
available to undergraduates is in the form of text. While in its paper form,
text provides information in a useful form, but it cannot be easily linked with
other related resouces, commented upon, and shared. Existing word-processing
files can easily be converted into the CaMILE EBook format which supports
linking of the text to external multimedia resources, allowing students to
annotate the book in useful ways (e.g., writing notes in the margin,
underlining key phrases, adding bookmarks, creating links from relevant phrases
in the book to their own relevant material), and sharing of students' notes
with one another. Students can also refer to EBook pages in their NoteBase
notes. The EBook format provides students with another avenue for exploring
subject matter (like the MediaBase) and relating and sharing this material with
others through sharing of book notes (like the NoteBase).
Figure 3: CaMILE Electronic Book Format. The book itself (upper window) can
be annotated in several ways: Dog-earing a page, underlining, linking to
student work (including notes in the NoteBase), and with margin notes. In
addition, multimedia (such as graphical figures) can be linked into the book by
the publisher.
CaMILE was used for two quarters in the Mechanical Engineering
course and one quarter in the Sustainable Development course sequence. The
students using CaMILE in ME, many of whom had rarely used a computer prior to
the course, volunteered to participate in a one credit laboratory, explicity as
an experiment but also as an opportunity for students to learn more about
technological support for design and learning. The students were required to
attend a laboratory session for three hours each week, but were encouraged to
use CaMILE on their own time at any computer facility on campus. After about
two weeks of activities designed to teach them how to use CaMILE as well as
word processing software, drawing packages, and electronic mail, they started
using CaMILE outside of the classroom. Additional activities were created to
demonstrate other uses of CaMILE to the students (distance collaboration to
answer questions, creation and participation in discussions designed to promote
articulation and reflection on issues related to design, etc.).
Outside of the in-class activities, students used CaMILE on their own in
support of their design activities and in several novel ways. They used CaMILE
to integrate their design work, to communicate with each other, and to create
histories of their design decisions. In the first quarter of use, the 14
students, TA, and software support person generated well over 400 Notes with
over 100 links to various kinds of resources.
In addition, the content of students' notes suggests that students are (1)
recognizing the strengths of the environment (both on its own and in relation
to other technologies) and (2) the importance of a collaborative approach to
design, as seen in the following quotes:
- It could be that a situation arose six months ago that influenced your
decision that people have long forgotten about. With CaMILE you can go back and
see exactly what went on and what you as an individual and a group were
thinking.
- I think the www is probably most effective for communicating
information to a large number of people, most of which you are not looking for
a response from. I think CaMILE is most effective for communicating information
to a small group of people who you want responses from and want to carry on a
conversation with, but don't want everyone interrupting.
- To sum it up. I guess I'm learning a lot about what the most effective
means of communicating with people is. I used to think that calling everyone is
the easiest, but now I'm realizing that e-mail and CaMILE are much more
effective use of my time for communicating information to our group.
- The more I think about how we have used CaMILE the more I realize how
much more we can learn from talking with others. I have always been the type to
try and figure things out myself using what I know and my own point of view. It
is very valuable to actually talk to others and find out what they think and
what they know.