It was also selected by U.S. Distance Learning Association as Best Distance Learning Product in the U.S. Government for 1999. Its many features would require too lengthy an explanation to be appropriate here. Briefly, this is a multi- user collaborative environment. Students can receive scenario assignments in a main briefing area. They can then break into small groups in one of six side areas and work collaboratively on a portion of the assignment.
Students only see what is going on in the side area in which they are working.
A variety of white board features are available that allow students to jointly work on exercises. Text and audio chat are available. This approach to training is commonly used in battlefield planning. Other applications might be system design, where students can collaboratively place and move symbols representing components of a system and justify to each other the reasons for the selections. Students can divide into groups to work on certain aspects of a system then meet in the main briefing area to go over the entire design.