Jeffrey Barlow, <barlowj@pacificu.edu>

• Director, Matsushita Center for Electronic Learning, Pacific University
• Editor, Journal of the Association for History and Computing
  
  
• SUMMARY:

  The Palace architecture or application is a visual chat environment which is easily programmed for educational purposes. In this presentation I will use the Buddhist Palace, an environment created at Pacific University with the help of grant funding from the North West Association of Academic Computing Services, as an example.

• Introduction: demonstrate Buddhist Palace < http://mcel.pacificu.edu/mcel/omm/index.html >
  Palace link, accessed via the palace browser found at: < dao.mcel.pacificu.edu >
  
  
• The advantages of such a visual chat room include:
  • Students have an immediate sense of direct participation in a learning community.
  • Students can construct their own learning activities.
  • The site can be made self-paced and self-assessing.
  • The instructor can add graphics which convey much information regarding the topic area, such as fine art.
  • The environment can be monitored by the instructor, either covertly or as a participant, or can stand alone.
  • The environment can be programmed to simulate many aspects of a computer game environment, both familiar and inviting to students.
  • The environment can be programmed to a degree by participants, encouraging research and learning in the application itself.
  • Successful participants can be given additional powers and responsibilities as rewards for successful learning.
  • The environment is widely distributed and supported by many commercial enterprises.
    
    
• Potential uses of a Palace Environment might include:
  • A graphical chat-room for discussing class issues in a graphically appropriate environment.
  • A self-paced and self-assessing environment for demonstrating understanding of class materials.
  • A self-paced and self-assessing teaching environment wherein both materials and assessing devices are found.
    
    
• Disadvantages of the Palace environment include:
  • Construction is labor intensive.
  • A large palace will probably require:
    • IPSCRAE programmer.
    • Graphic artist (Adobe Photoshop or equivalent)
    • A stable server.
  • Some students and faculty are repulsed by the unconventional environment.
  • Some are offended by its more conventional use as a teen-age chat environment.
    
    
• Resources:
  
  
  • URLS:

Note: If you are reading this in hard copy, you are reading a printout of a World Wide Web page found at:
< http://mcel.pacificu.edu/as/faculty/wkshps/iccel.html > Please consult the site for additional materials and live links.