Synergeia is an extension of BSCW. BSCW (Basic Support for Cooperative Work) enables collaboration
over the Web. BSCW is a ‘shared workspace’ system which supports document upload, event notification,
group management and much more. Built on BSCW, Synergeia adapts this system of shared
workspaces to create virtual places for learners to work and collaborate in groups. The Synergeia software
consists of two components:

-The asynchronous communication and collaboration software: BSCL (Basic System for Collaborative Learning).
-The synchronous communication and collaboration software: MapTool and Instant Messages. An important result of the ITCOLE-project was the development of a modular knowledge-building environment to support collaborative learning. In fact, three tools for collaborative learning were developed, evaluated and tested.

The software can be found at http://bscl.fit.fraunhofer.de, the Synergeia server for the ITCOLE project run by Fraunhofer FIT, Germany. BSCL is explicitly designed to support collaborative learning and knowledge building according to the progressive inquiry model. This pedagogical concept focuses on asynchronous, textual discourse, which fosters reflection, critical thinking and joint knowledge building. The threaded discussion facility of BSCW has been re-designed and enhanced with a
flexible system of thinking types to make the character of the notes and their relationships more explicit for the students. A knowledge building functionality has been developed. You can find more information of the use of thinking types below, in the
description of FLE3.

As an initial synchronous tool, MapTool has added a
drawing facility that allows a group of students to
work together in order to construct a conceptual
map of the ideas they are exploring. A synchronous
chat stream is maintained as an integral part of the
multi-user drawing tool in order to support the coordination
of work. This brochure contains a separate
section about Maptool.
With BSCL, teachers have many options for structuring
the virtual learning environment used by their
students in various educational activities. They can
also choose among several sets of thinking types in
different knowledge building areas. Students can
also use many features to structure their own group
work. To provide a more personal appearance of the
computer screen, photos of the students are prominently
used to indicate whose workspaces or remarks
are displayed.
In addition to the standard awareness features of
BSCW – like the extensive history reports – BSCL displays
lists of all members of a folder, with indications
of each member’s level of activity, for example,
whether they are using synchronous tools at
that time.

Three perspectives

In BSCL learning places are typically arranged as a
series of perspectives:

-a personal perspective in which a student can develop
his or her own initial thoughts and assemble
ideas from others or materials from the Web;
-a group perspective that is shared in a workgroup;
-a course perspective, where ideas and materials
can be discussed with all course participants.
The perspectives have special features and access
rights to help them work naturally in school settings
without putting a major burden on teachers to
design and set up such structures.
Course and user management

In the typical working scenario of Synergeia teachers
register their students or other colleagues to
the system. They create courses and enroll the students
to these courses. In a course the teachers could
form working groups among the enrolled students.
In a group a teacher may setup some initial discussion
for knowledge building. If students are logged
in to the system, they will see their home area with
their personal perspective and the courses in which
they are enrolled. In a course they will find the
working groups, in which they have to perform their
knowledge building tasks. By entering a group they
can join or start a discussion for knowledge building.
They may also start or join a MapTool session to
explore their ideas synchronously in a conceptual
map. If they are finished with their tasks, the students
can copy their results in the course perspective
to present these to or discuss these with their
course members.

Fle3 is a web-based learning environment. To be more specific Fle3 is a server software for computer supported collaborative learning (CSCL). Fle3 is designed to support learner and group centered work that concentrates on creating and developing expressions of knowledge (i.e. knowledge artifacts) and design. The software can be found at http://fle3.uiah.fi, from the Media Lab at the University of Art and Design Helsinki. Fle3 contains three learning tools and several administration tools.

WebTop

Each user of Fle3 gets a personal WebTop. WebTops can be used to store different items (documents, files, links to resources in the web, link to knowledge building notes and jam session artifacts) related to the studies or project and organize them into folders. The items in the WebTops are shared with other users in the same course or project, as users may visit each other’s WebTops. Only the owner of a WebTop may create, edit and remove items in her WebTop, but visitors may read the items. The WebTop also includes a shared “course folder” for each course or collaborative project. The shared folder is available in the Knowledge Building and Jamming, modules as well.
Knowledge Building

With the Knowledge Building tool, groups may carry out knowledge building dialogues, theory building and debates by storing their thoughts into a shared database. The knowledge building discussion is
scaffolded and structured by knowledge types, which
label the thinking mode of each discussion note. The
Knowledge Building tool contains two default
“knowledge type sets”: (1) Progressive Inquiry, and

(2) Design Thinking. Fle3 Users with enough user
rights may also copy, edit and create new “knowledge
type sets” to the system. Depending on the
knowledge type set selected, users are prompted
with guidelines and checklists to write their notes
to the database.
The Progressive Inquiry knowledge type set contains
the following knowledge types: Problem; My Explanation;
Scientific Explanation; Evaluation of the
Process and Summary. The knowledge types scaffold
(support and lead) students to carry out research-
like activities, which deepen their understanding
of the area under study. The complementary
knowledge type set made for collaborative design
contains the following knowledge types: Design
Context; Design Challenge; My Design Idea; New
Information; Evaluating an Idea; Organizing the Process and Summary.

The system offers a checklist explaining to the participants
what kind of things the note should include
in order to advance the process, when writing their
contributions to the knowledge building section. For
instance when writing New Information –note in
design knowledge building the Flea “agent” asks
from the author:
“Does the note present some new information related
to the design task? Remember to mention the
source where you got the new information:

-by interviewing users
-by analyzing the design context?
-studying earlier design solutions of others.”
The knowledge type sets guide students to consider
adequate and important things related to the process
and, in this way, helps students to write more
significant notes to the database. As an aid for helping
users to follow the knowledge building discussion,
users may take different kind of views to the
knowledge building database by sorting the notes
as a discussion thread, by writer, by knowledge type
or by date. With the advanced search engine users
may also search the knowledge building database in
many different ways.
Jamming

The Jamming tool is a shared space for collaborative construction of digital artifacts (pictures, text, audio, video). A study group may work together with some digital artifacts by simply uploading and downloading files. Versions are tracked automatically and different versions are displayed graphically. Users may also add annotations to artifacts. When setting up a jam session the tutor may choose from three types of jam sessions; (1) “mutate on previous” or (2) “explore possibilities” and (3) “diverge and converge”. This gives the users slightly different possibilities to make new versions and to make references to earlier versions. Originally the Jamming tool was designed (to be used) for visualizing ideas in a group. However, it has been noticed that Jamming could be used for many different kinds of collaborative design work that requires versioning.
The artifacts under process can be text, picture, poster, music, video, animation, multimedia or a piece of software.

Course and User Management

The staff and teachers taking care of the courses
and course participants have tools for managing users,
courses and participants of the courses. With
the user management tools staff users may add new
users manually or by inviting them via e-mail. With
the course management tools staff users may add
users to courses with a role of being ‘student’, ‘tutor’
or ‘teacher’ in that particular course.
Furthermore staff users may manage the knowledge
type sets, create new ones, copy and edit existing
ones and export and import them between Fle3 systems.
The staff users may also import and export courses
in XML format, compatible with the Educational

Modelling Language – EML defined by the Dutch Open
University. In the same way the administrator of the
Fle3 server may export the whole database in XML
and import the package into another Fle3 server.
Fle3 is easy to localize for different languages, requiring
only the translation of one text file. Currently
users may choose Danish, Finnish, English,
Spanish, French, Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese,
Norwegian, Dutch, Italian, Lithuanian or German as
their user interface language.
Fle3 is Open Source and Free Software released under
GNU the General Public Licence (GPL). The licence
is protecting users freedom to use, modify
and distribute Fle3.