Virtual classrooms and communities

Abstract

This paper describes how collaborative technologies, including a corporate intranet, email, videoconferencing, audioconferencing, Internet Relay Chat (IRC), NetMeeting, Virtual Places, WorldsAway, and other Internet-based conferencing tools, can be used to teach classes to geugraphically-dispersed participants. The paper covers the motivation for virtual classrooms, the selection and use of delivery technologies, deployment strategies and issues, participant feedback, and the Virtual University that evolved from the initial distance learning classes.