The Discourse Tool: A Support Environment for Collaborative Modeling Efforts

This paper describes the first experiences in development and usage of an environment to support a community in collaborative modeling efforts in the area of Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL). With first priority, the domain of interest, the sub-domains and the relationships have to be modeled to have a common understanding and a shared model for the further work and exchange. While the work continues, the model, and the sub-domain models continue to evolve. The tool that is presented here supports the modeling, especially the discourse conducted on the models in the collaborating network. With the tool i) the model rationale can be made transparent, ii) reasoning and agreements on changes in the model or its elements are systematically recorded by issue iii) the semantic wiki functionalities enhance the analysis of the discussion and discussion tracks. With the help of the tool, the community has continuously an updated model version at hand. Community members can raise an issue whenever a change or enhancement in the model is seen necessary. The members can share their updated sub-domain models and model variants for discussion. The tool is called Discourse Tool, since a discursive process is induced for negotiating and decision making on the model issues.