Orchestrating groupware in engineering education

Abstract

Engineering Education usually involves a big amount of practical work, such as simulations, programming, circuits design, etc, that may be carried out individually or in groups. Usually, laboratories count with materials and equipment, including theoretical books in a shelf, and an experiment is proposed to students organized in pairs/groups, who must compose a report of the experiment/practice. In regard to ICT support of Engineering Education scenarios a plethora of online simulators, e-books, wikis and other social software are usually scattered in multiple web sites. To solve this issue, we present an architectural approach based in two main points: a central EML engine, and a middleware for the integration of third-party tools. © 2010 IEEE.