Phase 0 - Origins

The project was conceived during a CERG day-long workshop held during June 2002. The group had access to some research funds garned under a Monash Strategic Innovations Fund project proposal entitled "Platform Independent Learning Software", originally proposed to migrate learning management software from proprietary bases into a platform-independent model.

With the project sponsor's agreement (Prof Alan Lindsay), this project was retargetted as the "Platform Independent Virtual Educational Environment", and with the addition of some important agent software to provide the underlying interoperability, PIAVEE, or "Platform Independent Agent-based Virtual Educational Environment", was born.

Phase 1 - Mohan Chhetri (2003)

This grant of some $60K was used to fund a full-time programmer, Mohan Chhetri, who had recently completed a Master's thesis with one of the project leaders (Shonali Krishnaswamy). Mohan's thesis was on agent-based software, and he was an excellent person for the task.

During this phase, most of the conceptual framework for the project was fleshed out. Weekly meetings would identify key features, and by the next week, Mohan would be able to show a working prototype of these features in action!

This phase climaxed at the end of the year, when a working prototype was demonstrated to the Committee of Associate Deans Teaching (CADeTs), and in the new year (early 2004) to the new Dean of the Faculty, Prof Ron Weber.

Phase 2 - Benoit Charpentier (2004)

Benoit was employed as visiting scholar under a small grant of $10,000 to develop some data mining capabilities to the project. Benoit undertook this work as an intern from his bachelor degree at UTC (Université de Technologie de Compiègne) in France.

Phase 3 - John Page and Brett Gillick (2005)

John and Brett re-engineered the prototype developed in Phase 1 to a) use JADE instead of Grasshopper as the agent technology, and b) to develop a web-based user interface to the system.

Phase 4 - Brett Gillick (2007)

When John Page left the project in early 2006, the project languished somewhat, as Brett was largely unavailable during the year (although he did do some work on it from time to time). In 2007, however, Brett was available again, and the project plan took a significant new turn.

Brett was asked to continue development of the user interface, but this time, using a standalone web browser client. Brett based this development around the Laszlo browser architecture, mimicking where possible the look and feel of the original phase 1 heavy-weight client.

Phase 5 - Brett Gillick and Tina Thomas (2007-8)

This phase was being funded by a UIMA (Unstructured Information Management Architecture) grant from IBM.

Phase 6 - decommissioning

This project has now been suspended, and has been subsumed by the IVEE project.