A cross-disciplinary project at Durham University aims to use multi-touch technology like that found in the latest mobile phones for interactive desktops, which would allow several students to work together. Project leader Dr Liz Burd, director of active learning in computing at Durham, said the idea sprang from work the computer science department had been doing on learning spaces. 'We were looking at how to support collaborative activity,' she said. 'In the computer science department, we have a lot of team design activities, and our traditional labs weren't suitable for communicating with one another.' Following an interim solution dubbed Tech-nocafe, the team realised that if an interactive plasma screen were used as the table surface, everyone could be physically involved in the design process. The researchers began work on prototypes two years ago and have recently received ￡1.5m from the EPSRC and ESRC learning and teaching research programme to develop the full solution - the SynergyNet technology-enhanced learning project. The four-year study will involve a psychologist, an educationalist and four computer scientists. Burd's vision is of a classroom with a set of multi-touch desks at which several individuals can work alone or in a group. There will also be a console from which the teacher can send out materials to the class or individuals, and a central interactive whiteboard on which the teacher can display the work from any desk.
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