Virtual room concepts for cooperative, scientific work

Abstract

Cooperative knowledge spaces offer new potentials for experimental and scientific work in the current fields of engineering and natural sciences. Widely accepted content management systems often only provide simple content in combination with communication tools; cooperative knowledge spaces are able to project the concept of natural cooperative work onto virtual rooms. In this article we introduce our concept of virtual rooms for scientific and educational work. We describe requirements for complex cooperative work in virtual knowledge spaces where the rooms are arranged in a dynamic, heterogeneous network and incorporate experimental laboratory equipment, shared whiteboards and version-controlled documents. We developed this concept in the context of our project "ViCToR-Spaces" (Virtual Cooperation in Teaching and Research for Mathematics and Natural Sciences) and are currently implementing some of the parts of the concept. © 2007 Springer.