uCampus is Now World Wide

Following a successful security audit carried out by the CiCS team at the University of Sheffield, the uCampus Platform (Release 0.45) has been made accessible to the World Wide Web since 4:00pm 30 July 2009.

With this world-wide accessbility in place, the weCAMP project team are now able to undertake the next stage of user engagement and evaluation activities. We have several external user groups in mind including the professional architectural practices employed by the University of Sheffield to design and deliver new builds and refurbishments, the Sheffield City Council, potential collaborators on JISC Benefits Realisation projects, researchers/educators abroad who have shown interests in uCampus.

I have written a web page regarding how to Download, Install and Launch uCampus. There is aslo a uCampus User Guide available that gives an overview of how uCampus may be used. I hope to start receiving questions, comments and suggestions on the uCampus Platform and the weCAMP project in the days months to come.

uCampus Release 0.45

uCampus verson 0.45 was released on Friday 24 July 2009. There are several new developments in this intermediary release (the next release is scheduled as Release 0.5):

(1) uCampus is now running on a new Virtual Server provisioned by CiCS - the UCAMPUS_SHEF server is shut down to save electricity and awaits relocation to a more suitable server room;

(2) A new batch of 13 grid sqaures are being deployed;

(3) The first version of uCampus User Guide is now made available under Help together with a link to the weCAMP Blog Site; and

(4) A new command Select All is added to allow users to retrieve all uCampus X3D models in one click, which could potentially make us lazy.

The Arts Tower is deployed on uCampus

The entire Arts Tower has been modelled and deployed onto uCampus today. It contains a total of 23 interior floor models each of which can be selected and displayed individually.

This marks an important project development as the Arts Tower was modelled by a post graduate student at the School of Architecture, Binh Nguyen.

The result demonstrates that the modelling methodology and the data standards as established and specified by Panagiotis Patlakas are working well. This initial test bed case essentially opens the door for other 3D modellers to participate in the continuous expansion of the uCampus X3D model bank. Any student at the University with 3D digital architectural modelling skills can produce X3D models conforming to the uCampus modelling specification.

There are another three PG students currently undertaking 3D modelling of St George Church, Jessop Victoria Wing, and the Bioincubator. We are eagerly waiting for the further results to confirm the methodology and specification.

uCAMPUS Launched across the UoS

uCAMPUS has now been added to the the software available on all computer desktops that are managed by the computer services department at the Unviersity of Sheffield. This is a big step towards insitutional innovation and change for the weCAMP research project. Staff and students can now access the uCAMPUS 0.04a and upload designs if they wish. We are now working towards putting the platform outside the firewall so that it can be utilised by external consultants and accessible to JISC partners.

Online JISC Programme Conference

Last week we took part in the online conference [using eluminate] with the other JISC research projects. Despite some technical issues, the day was a success in providing feedback about how our assembly with the I-borrow team from Canterbury went. In addition, we managed to communicate with the Erewhon team about linking up later on in the summer to discuss future collaborations. Applying for further benefits realisation funding to develop new project directions was also discussed, enabling us to work towards applications.

EDULEARN 09 Conference Paper

EDULEARN09 the International Conference on Education and New Learning Technologies will be held in Barcelona (Spain), on the 6th, 7th and 8th of July, 2009.The main objective of the conference is to promote and disseminate the experiences in New Technologies in Education and E-learning in all educational fields and disciplines.EDULEARN09 will be a unique International Forum for those who wish to present their projects and discuss the innovations and the latest innovations and results in the field of New Technologies in Education, E-learning and methodologies applied to Education and Research. This conference will be held at international level, counting with the participation of attendants from all parts and continents of the world.
The JISC team decided to attend this conference as it is a brilliant opportunity to put uCampus on a global platform. The abstract, written by Dr. Peng was submitted to the EDULEARN committee in April 2009 and soon after we received acceptance and were invited to write a paper in May 9 and attend the conference in July. After initial discussions the team decided to call the paper “VISUALISING FUTURE LEARNING SPACES IN CONTEXT: THE SHEFFIELD EXPERIMENT”.
The paper describes the design and development of uCampus platform, data and client. But mainly it focuses on the experiment carried out with students in the University of Sheffield taking the Interactive Urban Visualisation Modelling module (henceforth IUVM), which is required for the school’s Masters in Sustainable Architectural Studies, and can be taken as an elective for the MSc in Sustainable Architecture and Computer Aided Environmental Design, and the MAs in Urban and Architectural Design. IUVM is a combination between a typical architectural design studio and an advanced CAD module. Students were expected to submit design proposals based on a given brief while making maximum use of the uCampus platform in order to analyse and understand the current situation, derive the relevant data that will aid them in the design process, share ideas and exchange opinions with fellow students, and present the product of their work to the studio reviewers. Enrolled in the IUVM module were 22 students from various countries, whose educational background is typically architecture but also encompasses other disciplines associated with the built environment such as engineering, town planning, etc.
The paper goes on to describe the different file formats the students were asked to work with and also outlines their experiences, and results. Although we have briefly mentioned in the conclusion the various other applications of uCampus and its user groups and future potential, it was not possible to include these in detail within the scope of this paper because of time restrictions and word limits. However, the team plans to outline these in detail at the conference during the presentation of the paper and hope to generate interest among a wider audience. It has been decided that Panagiotis Patlakas and myself will be representing the team in at the conference to present the paper in July 09.
This is the team’s first paper and we are all very excited to find out what opportunities it brings for uCampus .

uCampus Release 0.04a

We have now released version 0.04a of uCampus. There are a number of new features in this increment so it is quite a significant update for the platform. Our enhanced interactive map is now a central feature of the user interface and provides a visual means of object selection to complement our existing interface. We have also georeferenced our map and this has enabled us to interface to Google Street View so that users can effortlessly find campus locations from directly within our application.

In general, the application is becoming more and more feature rich over time and this is reflected in the tool button additions to the user interface. Behind the scenes, we have implemented the second generation of our XML schema which will open the way for some more advanced features that we are planning in the next interation.

In addition, uCampus 0.04a is now a tenth of the download size than the previous version. This means that we can now employ Java Web Start technology as a means of client deployment. We hope that this will greatly simplify the distribution process for our users and ensure that they are always using the latest version of our software.