Lessons from industry in the design of virtual collaborative learning environments

The market for synchronous and asynchronous services and products is becoming very competitive. Whilst there are over fifty providers of e-learning tools and services, the realisation of its potential using existing technologies and organisational infrastructure remains a problem. This paper describes an evaluation of a project in this area, the Intelligent Distributed Virtual Training Environment (INVITE), that supports collaborative learning processes through distributed virtual environments. Through the virtual environment, complex collaborative exercises (which were also valuable to the organisation) were successfully completed. The system enjoyed a high level of user satisfaction. The evaluation demonstrated the utility of the use of social, non-verbal cues in the virtual environment.