These activities focus on collaboration and teaching students how to organize and systematize their explorations. Collaborative activities are supported through specially designed whiteboard, chat, teleconferencing, audio, file and application sharing tools.
Students access online schedules and determine whether faculty or other students are available.
The system is also equipped with both management and record keeping capabilities that allow teachers or trainers to analyze the various collaborative activities. During the past year, over 200 students enrolled in a variety of different courses at the University of North Texas used the system to collaborate with both students and teachers throughout the campus and different parts of the state. While the past year's research shows that collaborative interfaces help most groups work more effectively, it also shows that some groups are less successful, perform fewer group interactions, or are uncomfortable with the system even after several hours of training. For example, we observed that some individuals complete tasks but never share information with other members of the group. Other subjects are disruptive, eventually causing the group to fail.