It should also be possible for a moderator of the cooperation environment to set up nodes and relations for the users and to set up some pre-inscribed objects. Finally, everyone of the cooperating group should be able to edit the map, but only the group members and maybe the moderator. Audio or videoconferencing enhance the communication, but at the moment the bandwidth of the Internet hinders this, but nevertheless one should keep this possibility in mind. The Mapping Tool For getting over this situation, Coopmap was developed as a tool, which features real-time cooperative mapping as well as cooperation at different times. In Coopmap, every page the user gets from the server is considered as a map, so it contains nodes and relations.
Every node can contain a shortcut to an action, like cloning itself or displaying another page.
This features the possibility to guide new students very easily through the mapping tool. Furthermore it is very easy for a moderator to set up a map with predefined nodes and relations, which can be a starting point for students working on their own map. The mapping tool consists of an applet and a servlet - this is a Java program running on a server. Netscape Communicator 4.05 with Java 1.1 classes. As a teacher, one has different possibilities to use Coopmap - differing in the degrees of freedom the tool gives the students for use and the kind of cooperation.