Virtual Learning Environments

Cyberspace, an information space created through ubiquitously networked computers, has been transformed from fiction to fact in the past decade thanks to the advent of the World Wide Web. Although it can only be experienced through the mediation of computers, it is quickly becoming an alternative stage for everyday economic, cultural, and other human activities. As such, there is a potential and a need to design it according to architectural principles, rather than the prevailing document (page) metaphor. This need is most evident in learning environments, which rely on social and contextual attributes as much as they rely on content. This paper describes the underlying theory and our efforts to develop such virtual learning environments, and the software that allows users to access and inhabit them.