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context in a sufficient detailed way, we have to dis-
tinguish the educational systems of the 16 German
states, Austria and Switzerland, which results in 18
political units. Each of these systems comprises at
least three different school types (restricted to gen-
eral education): primary schools, grammar schools
and main/middle-schools. The schools run from
grade 1 up to grade 12 or 13. Within these types of
schools we plan to support the most demanding 15
subjects (at least in the long run): Mathematics,
Physics, Biology, Chemistry, German Language,
Foreign Languages (English, French, Latin, Spanish,
Italian), Computer Science, Geography, Social Sci-
ence, History, Economics.
The granularity of the TopicRooms in MyLearn-
Space is planned to be tailored to about one main
topic of the regarded subjects, which are typically
about 10 per year and curriculum. For example, the
curriculum for Mathematics in grade 10 of the Ba-
varian Gymnasiums comprises 10 main topics, e.g.
irrational numbers and square roots, quadratic and
hyperbolic functions or systems of equations with 3
variables. The knowledge structure of these topics
will be represented by a collaborative concept map,
see (Hubwieser & Mühling, 2011). According to our
investigations of concept maps, we expect these
“topic maps” to consist typically of about 40 nodes
and about 100 edges.
We have to offer one TopicRoom per main topic
of each curriculum. If we assume that the set of main
topics is the same for each subject over all political
units, we have to set up about 13*10 = 130 spaces
over all grades per subject. Therefore it would be
wise to start with some few selected subjects, e.g.
Mathematics, Physics and Biology. Within each of
these subjects we would have to consider up to 18
different contexts (maximal one per political unit).
4.2 The Tools
MyLearnSpace will offer a variety of tools that sup-
port the collaboration and offer information. Each of
these tools will provide a specific set of data for
each TopicRoom:
The Topic Wiki will collect and connect all the
knowledge that is available in the community around
the respective topic. Depending from the quality that
is assessed periodically by the community, it might
be necessary to set regulations for the writing access.
The Actual Chat offers the possibility to ex-
change information with peers synchronically, Post-
ings and Blog present the most interesting infor-
mation and material that was submitted most recent-
ly. Information about the current activities (e.g. in
the TV) could be posted to the Twit. The Formula
Editor will provide features to write Mathematical
formulas in all windows, while the Material Brows-
er will support the search of the most helpful docu-
ments or multimedia files.
Of course, there is a need for a rating system that
assures at least a certain level of quality of the con-
tent. We will implement a system that offers the
learners as well as the supporters a choice of 0-5
stars according to their subjective valuation. There
will be an option to suppress all content that is rated
not yet at all or below an adjustable threshold, e.g. 3
stars. Additionally there will be a kind of ”I like it”
button that can be pressed at all elements. The num-
ber of pressing will also contribute to the rating of
an element.
From each TopicRoom, there will be access to
our concept mapping tool CoMapEd (Concept Map
Editor), which is already in use at this moment. This
platform was developed in order to support our stud-
ies of concept maps according to the following de-
sign objectives:
1. It should be possible to use on as many systems
as possible, as easy as possible.
2. The data should be stored centrally, in order to
allow assessing it.
3. The software should be able to restrict the set of
concepts and edge labels to a pre-defined set, if so
desired by the assessment designer.
4. Users should be able to come back to the system
to continue working on their map.
5. Users should be able to export the map in order
to use it personally, if they desire.
6. The software should allow the researchers, to
score the edges of the concept maps.
7. The software should allow flexible export on the
backend in order to pass the data to other tools that
are used for our research.
The idea to use software in the creation of concept
maps goes back right to the “inventor” of concept
maps, Novak. His CMAP tools provide a stand-
alone software solution for drawing a concept map
(Novak, 1990). Gouli et al. developed the tool
COMPASS (Gogoulou et al., 2005) that can be used
both from the learner perspective and as an assess-
ment tool. Also, it allows incorporating the users in
the assessment process (e.g. by having them rate
concept maps of other users). It is unclear, in how
far COMPASS would meet requirements 2-7, but as
it is a stand-alone program, we felt that we can do
better concerning requirement 1 by using a browser-
based solution. In (Taricani and Clariana, 2006)
software called KNOT is used to analyse concept
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