Lyceum: internet voice groupware for distance learning

This paper describes the design, implementation and deployment of Lyceum, a groupware system providing students and tutors with real time voice conferencing and visual workspace tools, over the standard internet. Lyceum uses a Java client/server architecture to tackle a formidable set of networking requirements: multi-way voice communication with synchronous shared displays, scalable to hundreds of simultaneous users, running over normal modem connections via unknown internet service providers, on home PCs. Additionally, the design had to support multiple courses with different requirements. We describe the interdisciplinary requirements analysis, and iterative design process, by which an academic course team was able to specify and evaluate prototypes. We present the system’s architecture, describe the technical successes and failures from Lyceum’s first large scale deployment, and summarise its affordances for interaction and learning.