VISUAL UNDERSTANDING ENVIRONMENT
Ranjani Saigal and Anoop Kumar
Academic Technology
Tufts University
Academic Technology
Academic Technology (AT) at Tufts is a
university-wide resource that provides
consultations, collaborative
partnerships, and faculty development
focusing on the use of instructional
technology to support teaching and
research initiatives.
Overview
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Teaching and Learning with Digital Resources
– The Problem
Educational Foundations
Concept Maps in Education
VUE – The Solution
VUE – Architecture
VUE – Implementations
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Fedora
Artifact
Demo
Future Direction
Teaching & Learning with Digital
Resources – The Problem
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Valuable digital resources for teaching and
learning have grown exponentially over
the past several years.
Custom digital libraries hold these
collections of digital resources
Lack of tools that provide the flexibility and
responsiveness required to support critical
and creative thinking with digital
resources.
Educational Foundations
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Constructivism – Students learn best when
they are actively engaged in constructing
their knowledge – in structuring and
restructuring information
Individual Differences – Cognitive
differences among people influence their
approach to learning.
Educational Foundations
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Learning takes place by the assimilation of
new concepts and prepositions into
existing concept prepositional frameworks
held by the learner
Meaningful learning occurs when it is
relatable to the learner’s prior knowledge.
Concept maps are useful tools to bring
about meaningful learning.
Concept Maps in Education
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Tools for organizing and representing
knowledge.
Concepts are semantic units of learning
Include concepts usually enclosed in
circles or boxes of some type and
relationships between concepts indicated
by a connecting line between the two.
Words on the line specify the relationship
between the two
Concept Mapping Tools
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CMap
Smartdraw
Visio
Kmap
Inspiration
Concept Mapping Tools CMAP
Concept Mapping Tool –
Smartdraw
From Concept Maps to Content
Maps
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Linking content to concept enhances value
of concept maps and transforms them into
content maps.
Digital content sources:
Local Drives
 World Wide Web
 Remote Drives
 Digital libraries
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Teaching & Learning With Digital
Resources - The Problem


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Valuable digital resources for teaching and
learning have grown exponentially over
the past several years.
Custom digital libraries hold these
collections of digital resources
Lack of tools that provide the flexibility and
responsiveness required to support critical
and creative thinking with digital
resources.
VUE - A Solution
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A visual environment for structuring, presenting
and sharing digital information that allows faculty
and students to integrate digital resources into
teaching and learning
A way to access different kinds of digital
resources stored in different digital repositories
Has tools for teachers and learner to navigate
through these resources to support critical and
creative thinking.
Leveraging Open Standards
It leverages open and extensible
development platform of OKI and
FEDORA digital repository to
facilitate collaborative open
source development.
Goals for VUE
1.
In support of teaching, provide faculty with a flexible, visual tool for
semantically structuring and creating pathways through digital materials
in a manner most consistent with the ideas and concepts that they must
communicate to their students.
2.
In support of active learning, provide students with a flexible tool for
manipulating and extending existing instructional presentations
(concept/content maps) in support of personal reflection on course topics
as well as support for the creation and communication of new, personally
meaningful concept/content maps.
3.
Extend the value of FEDORA-based digital libraries and their collections
by providing a flexible, visual tool for viewing and organizing digital
content in pursuit of individual learning and research goals.
4.
Leverage OKI technical standards to enable the sharing, distribution and
integration of this new educational tool in educational environments and
systems beyond Tufts University.
Learning
Theories
- Constructivism
- Active Learning
- Individualized
Learning
VUE Overview
Technical Infrastructure
OKI-FEDORA Bridge
VUE
OKI
Support
- Faculty needs
- Learners needs
Extend
- Digital Libraries
- OKI Standards
DR
API
DR Implementations
FEDORA
Digital
Repository
Digital
Repository
VUE – Architecture
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Concept map components
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Resource components
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Nodes
Links
Pathways
Resource objects
Data sources
Auxiliary components
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Panels
Drawing tools
Menus
Tool bars
Resource Interface
Resource Interface
•getTitle
•getSpec
•getPreview
•getProperties
•getExtension
•displayContent
MapResource
(implements all the above methods
for VUE map)
AssetResource
get/setAsset
(oki.dr.Asset)
CabinetResource
(oki.filing.Cabinet)
Data Source Interface
DataSource Interface
•getId
•getDisplayName
•getAddress
•getPublishMode
•isAutoConnect
VueDataSource
(implements all the above methods
for VUE )
FedoraDataSource
(connect to Fedora)
GoogleDataSource
(Conduct google
search)
Local/Remote
artifact.DataSource
DataSource
(connect to artifact
(oki implementations)
repository)
VUE Implementations
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Fedora
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Digital Repository Architecture
Artifact
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Art History database at Tufts
VUE Implementation - Fedora
OKI Bridge
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Fedora Object Model
OKI.DR API
OKI.DR asset model
Fedora – OKI bridge
Fedora Object Model
OKI.DR API
OKI.DR Asset Model
Fedora OKI Bridge
Fedora
OKI
PID
Shared.Id
DR
DigitalRepository
FedoraObject
Asset
FedoraObjectIterator
AssetIterator
BehaviorInfoStructure
InfoStructure
Behavior
InfoRecord
DisseminationInfoPart
InfoPart
Dissemination
InfoField
ParameterInfoPart
InfoPart
Parameter
InfoField
DataOutputStreamInfoPart
InfoPart
DataOutputStream(MIMETypeStream)
InfoField
VUE Implementations - Artifact
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ASP, MS SQL Based web application to
organize art history contents
Developed XML object generator for
Artifact
Design and develop resource and data
source classes in VUE to work with Artifact
object model
Future Direction
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Interface for any datasource
Federated search
Front end to course management tools
User interfaces to view complex maps
Semantic zoom
 Fish eye view
 3- dimensional views
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Web-site
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http://vue.tccs.tufts.edu/
VUE Overview
Learning
Theories
- Constructivism
- Active Learning
- Individualized
Learning
Technical Infrastructure
Support
- Faculty needs
- Learners needs
Extend
- Digital Libraries
- OKI Standards
VUE
Datasource Interface
Fedora
Implementation
Fedora
Digital Repository
DR Implementations
Digital
Repository