A multimedia-enhanced collaborative learning environment

The proliferation of the Internet has brought about the notion of online virtual communities. One enabling technology for online communities is multiuser environments such as Multi-User Dimensions (MUDs) and Object-Oriented MUDS (MOOs). These text-based collaborative learning environments have recently have been integrated with the World Wide Web, thus harnessing the graphics and multimedia-rich environments available therein. Learners can directly experience, manipulate, and create objects in their rich multimedia form. MUDs and MOOs are augmented with synchronous collaboration technology that provided simultaneous control and viewing of shared documents and applications. In this paper, we describe a multimedia-enhanced MOO system called SpaceALIVE! and our experiences from a pilot project involving Singapore students who use SpaceALIVE! as a collaborative learning environment are reported. Copyright © 2000 Blackwell Science Ltd.