Imagine a student enrolled in a biology course who has to learn about the topic of nutrition. In a traditional science classroom this student would start off by attending lectures and reading course materials to develop basic knowledge of the subject matter. Sometimes, and only after domain knowledge has been gained the student may be invited to perform a straightforward and well-described experiment to examine the relationship between two familiar variables. A written exam at the end of the course is used to demonstrate whether the student is able to recall the material.

SCY takes a different approach by making the students’ hands-on experience the driving force behind the learning process. In SCY Lab, the SCY learning environment, students start with an authentic research question (e.g., “how can we manage livestock to produce healthier milk?”) and perform creative and productive activities to answer that question. Students would create models, design nutrition schemes for cows, design and conduct experiments with virtual cows etc. The student could even be given the opportunity to literally collect data “in the field”. These data are then entered into SCY-Lab for further analysis and reflection, and provide the basis for writing a recommendation to farmers and the dairy industry. In this process students have access to and exchange their learning products (that are called Emerging Learning Objects (ELOs)) with other learners. Student assessment will take place on the basis of the ELOs gathered in a portfolio. Part of the learning process is also a process of peer assessment.

In order to mediate these learning activities, SCY moves beyond the prevailing conception of a learning environment as a self-contained computer program designed specifically for a given task and domain. In SCY, learning will take place from a personalized place in which learners find activities to undertake, tools and services that scaffold them in these activities as well as communication facilities to contact peers who are engaged in similar tasks. SCY-Lab will be a collection of components that supports the complete learning endeavour by means of the repository for storing learning objects, the provision of scaffolds and services, and pedagogical agents that are able to signal relevant patterns in the learning process and adapt the learning environment in an appropriate way. This network of interacting components will provide an individualized learning experience of learners, who will at the same time also feel part of a learning community.