HYZONE: DIVERSIFYING RESOURCES IN LEARNING SPACES VIA PERSONALIZED INTERFACES Raul Morales Salcedo, Hiroaki Ogata and Yoneo Yano Information Science and Intelligent Systems Department Tokushima University 2  1 Minami Josanjima-Cho, Tokushima 770 Japan Abstract This paper presents an approach to develop and to integrate highly diverse resources in learning spaces via personalizable interfaces and virtual collaboration areas. Digital libraries comprise vast digital repositories and wide range of services, users environments and interfaces, all intended to support learning and collaborative research activities. We are developing a distributed learning environments for which services and interfaces include, for example, web-based learning systems using annotation environment, adaptive WBL, agents-based asynchronous virtual classrooms, computer assisted language learning using video and annotation, teacher support environment in web-based training system, authoring systems for WBL/T, videoconference- based CSCL environments, user agents for video information retrieval, recommendation agents, 3D visualization aids, and access to digital documents that support specific courses and projects. The diversity of these interfaces, plus the volume and dynamism of the digital contents underlying collections, results in a complexity that has the potential to make the digital library unwieldy for the user. In order to assist users in dealing with this complexity, we are designing environments, termed collaborative personal and group spaces, which provide users with means to access and control all available resources in a uniform fashion from a single vantage point. We discuss our ongoing design and development experiences as well as initial usage results. Key Words Personalizable interfaces, CSCW, CSCL, digital libraries, personal and group spaces. 1. Introduction The system we have come to know as digital libraries are not really libraries in the usual sense. The abstractions of content and services that generally describe physical libraries have been used by researchers to convey some of the functionality enabled by digital libraries, but this metaphor does not even suggest the major differences that the introduction of a new medium entails. In addition to a new substrate, digital libraries comprise new information units and genres, allow for multiple novel organization schemes, and make diverse browsing and searching mechanisms possible. A user of digital libraries requires new skills, new tools and new interfaces to cope with the complexity of such a diverse system and to fully exploit its potential. This paper analyzes some of the majors problems faced by users when using collections and services provided by network learning environments or digital libraries and presents an approach for the integration of learning environments resources which is based on the concepts of personal and collaborative learning spaces. We posit that users should have at their disposal means to create virtual areas within the learning environment in which they can place information objects that are relevant to their interest and ongoing tasks. We refer to this sort of virtual space as a collaborative personal space (CPS). Additionally, digital libraries and learning environments should also provide users that usually work remotely with virtual spaces where they can meet to discuss objects and topics of interest and to work collaboratively on group projects while maintaining the capability to access materials in digital collections. We refer to this second category of virtual place as a collaborative group space (CGS). Our group has been conducting research in the areas of computer supported collaborative learning (CSCL) and digital libraries (DL) and has produced advances both in the construction of digital contents and in the provision of e-learning for users in the context of distributed system architecture. We have implemented and deployed various architectural components which are available to a wide user community. In this context, we are designing and implementing one version of collaborative personal spaces and other of collaborative group spaces. We report our design and development experiences in this particular area of our learning environment. The remainder of the paper is organized as follows: Section 2 elaborates on our learning environment effort focusing on human-computer interaction issues, architectural components and interfaces and services to be 416-073 37