The personal study rooms have full conferencing and chat facilities and access to a Resource Room, which in any particular workshop contains structured course material. A one week mandatory on-line collaborative exercise is included. Design and developement of the system, and technical support and maintence came from the University of Wales where the file server that runs the system is located. Interaction was engineered by structured exercises and tutor intervention. Workshops have largely been as much a discovery of technical constraints and ways of overcoming them but we have also learned much about promoting interaction in this multi-cultural environment.
Participants enjoy the collaboration and sense of 'game'.
Technical support was provided by an on-line WebBoard expert. Chris Webster provided student support. The design for a collaborative learning environment needs very great attention to encourage users. Group work is done in 'problem-solving studios'. Although the technology proved very reliable and there has been no loss of service or data in the system, individual's personal computers or poor network connections can cause problems.