**4.2 Users' interaction in education and research**

The classical concept of distance learning implemented when time and distance separate educators and students is increasingly replaced by Internet-supported systems that are employed to assist daily academic interaction even when researchers, educators and students are not separated by time or distance. This is the result of a conceptual and methodological paradigm shift that implies an ongoing change towards pervasive computing and ubiquitous education and research as already discussed in the previous sections.

Considering the Internet as the start, Castells extrapolates 1996 the expected development of such a networked system towards becoming pervasive, permeating the everyday life. The

Internet-Supported Multi-User Virtual and Physical

however, could not always be afforded.

development of user-friendly software.

of knowledge, expertise and experience.

activities.

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As technologies evolve and pervasive forms increasingly emerge, permeating all aspects of academic everyday life, concepts such as distance learning are gradually replaced by ubiquitous education and research implemented in sentient, interactive environments. The traditional divide between formal (physical) and informal (virtual) contexts of education and research is blurred. Technological as well as social, cultural, and institutional changes mean that learning, studying, and researching are possible across spatial and temporal barriers. Internet-supported academic education and research implies thus that the physical environment with integrated, networked, interactive devices such as Protospace incorporates increasingly aspects of context-awareness, adaptation, and anticipation, (Zelkha et al., 1998; Aarts et al., 2001) supporting virtual and physical everyday academic

Such systems may show, however, as in the case of the E-Archidoct program, that only a limited amount of students may participate successfully in such a program. Reasons for this may be found not only in technological requirements but also in methodological constraints; Students and educators from all over Europe participating in E-Archidoct were confronted with one of the main barriers to such virtual collaborative interaction, which is the difficulty in achieving agreement when diverse viewpoints, cultural boundaries, and different

Furthermore, students' limited access to necessary software and hardware as well as insufficient know-how in dealing with software and hardware was an additional problem: Some design assignments within E-Archidoct, for instance, required software and hardware to which not all students had access. Furthermore, local technical support (for tutors and students) was needed in order to ensure successful participation in the program, this,

Future developments of virtual and physical systems for Internet-based and –supported education require, therefore, access of all participants to software and hardware as well as development of computer literacy and technology know-how among them. This may be implemented via educating students and researchers with respect to the use of Internetbased facilities before starting specific education and research program but also implies

However, interaction models whether menu-driven or GUI-based (Graphical User Interface) are improving and are increasingly supported by applications such as mobile phones, radio-frequency identification tags, and GPS (Global Positioning System). As these devices grow smaller, more connected and more integrated into spatial environments so that only multimodal user interfaces remain perceivable for users (Aarts et al., 2001), Hyperbody investigates and further develops their use for academic education and research. Protospace, for instance, may operate in the future as physical and virtual laboratory enabling users to even remotely conduct physical experiments from other geographical locations. The benefits of such remote laboratories are known in engineering education (Ferreira et al., 2010) and imply advantages such as: (1) Relaxation of time constraints and 24/7 accessibility; (2) Relaxation of geographical constraints and independence from physical locality of researchers; (3) Material costs reduction due to sharing of lab costs and avoiding start-up costs for new laboratories; (4) Enhanced sharing

working and cognitive learning styles exist (Dirckinck-Holmfeld, 2002).

purpose of Internet-supported systems is, therefore, not anymore to only bridge time and distance but to support everyday academic education and research by incorporating ubiquitous, interactive devices into the physical space. In this context, Protospace can be seen as a prototype for pervasive computing that is integrated into physical space and is employed in academic daily life, whereas interaction between users and data takes place in a networked, Internet-supported, embedded system.

In such a networked system, users are connected with other users, multimedia databases and applications enabling reading and editing of data, sensing-actuating, and computing in such a way that users interact physically and virtually as needed in a physical, digitallyaugmented environment.

By integrating concepts such as Autonomous Control (Uckelmann et al., 2010) the Internet of Things is envisioned as a network in which self-organized virtual and physical agents are able to act and interact autonomously with respect to context and environmental factors. Such context awareness (Gellersen et al., 2000) implies data collection and information exchange thus communication between users and physical environment; it may imply acquisition of data with respect to users' habits, emotions, bodily states, their social interaction, and their regular and spontaneous activities as well as context data with respect to spatial location, infrastructure, available resources, and physical conditions such as noise, light, and temperature. Information exchange thus communication between physical (sentient) environment and users may, however, not only imply accommodating but also challenging interactions.

As a context aware system, Protospace is concerned with the acquisition of context data by means of sensors, as mentioned before, the interpretation of the data collected by sensors, and the triggering of accommodating and challenging actions as response to the interpretation of collected data, whereas responses may imply operation of electrical light, sun shading, and projection screens, depending on local and global needs, etc. Furthermore, Protospace's context awareness addresses also activity recognition as implemented in interactive lectures and CAD-CAM sessions described in the previous sections.
