Collaborative Learning through Flexible Web CVE: The Experience of WebTalk

Introduction

Shared virtual environments, as collaboration tools, CVE, are mainly intended as a way to support collaboration of several users working on a common (virtual) scene (data model). Communication between instructors and trainees (simulation and training applications), sharing data (for visually supported discussions of scientists or decision-makers) (CSCW), support for innovative teaching-learning and support for collaborative e-learning (CSCL), are all examples of use for shared virtual environments. These applications (re)create a multi-user virtual world, according to Damer (1997), as two or three-dimensional graphical environments inhabited by users (represented as digital actors called “avatars”) that share with other users time, space and actions, cooperating together for a common goal.

Several different software systems, both commercial and research prototypes, support today’s Collaborative Virtual Environments. We started in 1998 a development, WebTalk, which has evolved, over the years, to the current WebTalk04, described in the next paragraphs.