Research Communities: A Commercial REAL for Distributed Postgraduates and Professionals

"Real, real gone" - Van Morrison

Here is a paper called Research Communities: A Commercial REAL for Distributed Postgraduates and Professionals that I wrote with Richard Harding of Harrow Business School, University of Westminster and Dr Sarah Vaughan of Research Communities back at the turn of the century. " ... We then describe the design of Research Communities, a commercial learning environment that augments traditional Rich Environments for Active Learning (REALs) in three ways: (i) by providing AI tools for independent research, (ii) by maintaining a learning portfolio and (iii) by facilitating the formation of self organizing communities of practice. Finally, we describe a formative evaluation undertaken with international MBA students. ... A suitable Rich Environments for Active Learning (REAL) should address the learners’ needs for access to authentic materials and management of limited research time. REALs need not be centered upon pre-designed multimedia or micro-world resources (Grabinger and Dunlap, 2000). However, if REALs are centered upon such resources, they may restrict learners to a predetermined conclusion, solution or opinion. Centering on the World Wide Web contrasts with such closed resources because it offers any number of viewpoints on a given topic. The potential problem is that the learner must spend precious searching time for relevant information. Research Communities applied intelligent tools to tame the web and help learners to optimize their research time ... " (Shurville, Vaughan S. and Harding R., 2001).

Reference: Shurville S., Vaughan S. and Harding R., (2001). Research Communities: a Commercial Research Environment for Active Learning for Distributed Postgraduates and Professionals, Computer Aided Learning 2001, University of Warwick, UK.