Emergo was a project that developed a toolkit to support the production of scenario-based cases for educational purposes. The toolkit allows authors to design cases with locations, activities, resources, interviews and other components. A scripting component controls student progression and experience through the case based on conditions and actions. Students can play through cases seeing locations, conducting activities, and interacting with interviews and other components as allowed by the scripting. The toolkit is designed with a layered architecture to allow flexibility and extensibility through additional components without changing the underlying data model which stores all content as XML.

1. Emergo
- Emergo was a SURF project that ended in december last year.
- Goal was to develop an efficient methodology for the support of the production of
scenario-bases cases
Authentic scenarios
- The scenarios should be as authentic as possible to support the following goal.
- To achieve this goal we have made extensive use of video.
Emergo products
- We delivered two Emergo products.
- One is the overall methodology on the left of the screen that supports the case
production cycle: analysis, design, development, delivery and evaluation
- One important phase is the design phase, during which scenarios are written. Products
are mainly documents in which the scenarios are written in great detail.
- The other product is the toolkit which supports case development and delivery. I will
focus on the toolkit.
Emergo toolkit: case development
- After scenarios are written and videos and other assets are produced, the toolkit is used
to enter the case.
- You start making a new case by giving it a name.
- Then you define the different roles within the case (not in picture).
- The next step is to choose the different components you want to use within the case
and to enter the scenario data.
- You start with the bones: locations, empack and activities. They form the base of the
case. In a minute I will show you what the function of these components.
- Then you choose the flesh. There are components for entering resources, e-messages,
alerts, interviews, question items and assessments.
- When all the other components are filled with content, you can start with the brain,
entering script. You don’t have to use script, but if you want to introduce gaming
elements or present the case dependent on the progress of a user, you should.
- The scripting component is the most important and powerful component of Emergo. I
will show you later.
Emergo toolkit: case delivery
- This is of less importance.
- The main point is that a caserunmanager can start and manage runs of a case, so he
decides which students will attain in a run and in which role(s).
- Tutors will see an overview of the students within a run and can see their progress.
- Students can playt a case.
Emergo player demo
- I first show you the player, so this is what students see when they start a case. It is one
of three cases developed within the Emergo project.
- I’ll show it by using the preview option. Authors can always preview their entered
data.
- You see several doors representing locations you can enter.
- Locations are edited within the locations component.

2. - Some doors are grey because you cannot enter yet. Which locations you can enter is
regulated by script.
- You get an overview of the locations by clicking the navigation icon.
- Another icon is the empack icon. The empack can be compared to a backpack in
which you have everything you need to do an activity.
- On the empack are two components: resources and e-messages.
- Which components are available on the empack can be regulated by script.
- Resources is a tree structure of all kind of resources a student can use during an
activity. Maps/resources can be made available or not using script, so you can
personalise a learner experience.
- E-messages is a component to receive and send predefined e-messages within the
Emergo environment, so you can monitor what students are doing. Using script a
message can be send to a student. A student can send messages to other roles within
the case, also npc’s. For instance to send in an outcome. Availability of messages can
be controlled by scripting.
- The last icon you see is the activity icon. You see an activity tree. A student can check
activities himself or it can be controlled by script, also the availability.
- When we enter another location it can be empty or you can take an interview, have a
conversation or enter a meeting. All these possibilities are entered within the interview
component. You can ask questions and subquestions. Availability and even which
answer is given can be controlled by script.
- This was a short introduction of the player.
Emergo author demo
- What you see is the Emergo component editor. All content is entered in tree structures.
All components are edited with this editor. It uses component xml definitions to render
the tree.
- At first above you see component settings: is the navigator icon initially visible and
clickable.
- What you see are the different locations used within the case and per location one or
more backgrounds (controlled by script).
- On the right you see the initial status of locations and backgrounds, for instance
visibility.
- If I choose to edit a background you see the following options. An id to be able to
identify the background by the author, for instance within script. You can upload a
background picture. And you see an initial status preselected. It means this
background will be shown initially when entering the location.
- Here you see an overview of all components used within the case. You see resources,
e-messages, empack, interviews. You see there are two interview components. Most
components can be multiple, so you can structure your content.
- Further we see an assessments component, question items, alerts, several scripting
components and an activity component.
- I shortly show you the interviews component. Here you see an interview. It starts with
an opening fragment. Afterwards I can ask four questions with their own answers. As
said before it’s also possible to present subquestions and to give an another answer
controlled by script.
- If I choose to edit a fragment you can see I can upload my own video stream, choose
one put on the server by an admin or link to an external video stream.

3. - The most important Emergo component is the scripting component. You see
conditions and actions to perform when a condition is triggered. You also see it is
possible to use subconditions. You can compose a condition using logical operators.
- A condition can be triggered by a user action, such as entering a location, opening a
resource, asking a question, ending an interview, etc. A condition can also be triggered
by a timer. You can enter conditions on all component states and component content
states, such as locations, questions etc.
- Examples of actions are presenting another background on a location, playing another
interview on a location, making a component available on the empack, providing new
resources, sending e-messages, sending alerts, starting a timer. You can change all
component states and component content states.
- If I choose to edit a condition you see a textual description. In this case it says a
particular interview is ended.
- If I choose to edit this description you see I can compose the condition by first
choosing a component (interview), and so one. If there is some time left I can tell you
more.
- An action is built the same way. Except state values are set, not read.
- Here you see the definition of a timer.
- This was a short introduction of the author environment.
Emergo usp’s
- Content can be entered by teachers. Only scripting component maybe is to difficult.
- Multi-role content. Can be entered by authors. Not yet fully playable.
- Monitoring. A tutor can send e-messages as if he is a npc.
Emergo toolkit: technical choices
- Spring: commonly used by Dutch software houses, used for Emergo engine.
- Zk: used for rich interface. Very active development community. New version every
couple of months.
Emergo toolkit: architecture
- 5 layers so separation of concern. For instance interface layer can be exchanged by
other. Or database layer.
Emergo toolkit: technical usp’s
- Components can be added without changing datamodel because all data is saved as
xml.
Emergo toolkit: extensions
- Expression walls. Students can create their own collection on a specific subject and
put it on a wall within Emergo. They do this by dragging all kind of objects, files, urls
etc. on the wall, giving it an icon and adding some metadata. They can also add a
question about the object. Students can visit each other walls and rate it on different
aspects and can answer questions. They can compete on best rating for wall, number
of good answers, number of visitors.