Several critical problems in a real-time interactive virtual classroom

Virtual classroom is an indispensable part of distant learning systems and an important direction in the CSCL research field. It provides a teaching environment under different time and location. The real-time interactive virtual classroom given in this paper is based on the three-layer client/server architecture. It provides a serial of real-time, interactive cooperative tools and offers some Web services in order to be integrated with other systems easily. This virtual classroom also implements a management and cooperation mechanism and a real-time learning mode based on synchronization - problem-based learning. Moreover, this paper makes some analyses and discussion about the roles and their supported tools of virtual classroom.