Abstracts - Earli

produced. The results point to several critical aspects that have to be considered further if workintegratedlearning as an educational concept is to meet the demands of a comprehensiveintegration of theory and practice. Integration, on an organisational level, is not sufficient formanaging the tensions between a thematic and a discipline-based structure at a content level. It isargued that the emphasis on autonomy and self-directed learning pervading much PBL-researchoften overlooks the question of how the learning content is dealt with in instruction. Instead, anapproach is suggested for studying and designing learning environments that focuses on how therealms of education and work are utilized as resources in the students’ interactions with a moreexperienced tutor.Knowledge of experts and novices in the field of entrepreneurshipBarbel Furstenau, Dresden University of Technology, GermanyIris Trojahner, Dresden University of Technology, GermanyEntrepreneurs are assumed to be essential for modern economies in order to assure economicgrowth and positive impacts on employment. In order to help to-be entrepreneurs learn necessaryprofessional and personal skills, courses and curricula have to be developed. These curriculashould be sensitive to prior knowledge of participants and lead to expert knowledge. In light ofthese considerations we conducted a study aimed at evaluating the knowledge of experts andnovices about successful entrepreneurship for the long-term viability of a copy company. Theexperts and novices were requested to draw their knowledge as a concept map with namedconcepts and named arrows (relations) between the concepts by using paper and pencil. The datawere analysed by using a categorical and a structural content analysis. As a result we obtainedmodal concept maps, which represent the knowledge of groups of test persons both in terms ofstructure and of content. The comparison of the experts’ and novices’ modal concept map revealsthat the experts’ knowledge is more differentiated and integrated than that of the novices. Withregard to the content the novices disregard the importance of the personality of the entrepreneur (e.g. values, expectations, aims) and his/her influence on employees as well as on customers whereasthis connection is emphasized by the experts. Furthermore the experts focus on a long-termperspective for the company in the sense that they regard net assets, finance issues and investmentwhereas the novices take into account a selection of short-term factors that cause expenses. Thesefindings define a starting point for the development of new curricula and the evaluation of existingcurricula.Collaborative technologies in education research: a study of the implementation of VirtualResearch Environments in three UK projectsVito Laterza, CARET, University of Cambridge, United KingdomRichard Procter, CARET, University of Cambridge, United KingdomPatrick Carmichael, CARET, University of Cambridge, United KingdomEducation researchers are showing growing interest for Virtual Research Environments (VREs).VREs support research among geographically-distributed institutions, allow for collaborationoutside the formal spatiotemporal coordinates established at workplace level, offer viable solutionsfor research data storage and act as integrated spaces for different research-oriented software tools.The aim of this paper is to explore some of the factors that facilitate or inhibit a successfulimplementation of a VRE for collaborative research work. The empirical data are drawn from along-term evaluation of three UK education research projects. Our findings suggest that the natureof the research project, budgetary resources, the history of collaboration among participatingresearchers and institutions, project management practices, and the development of effective– 862 –