A collaborative lab- and learning environment for a virtual database-practical at the virtual university

This paper introduces an authentic learning environment with an authentic database laboratory for collaborative distance teaching. We developed and established a three-server-environment for a new type of database practical that is in its first testing cycle. It offers an environment capable of providing all the services that would be needed for a practical that requires a whole semester but no physical presence of the student. Bearing in mind the special requirements of distance education we tried to develop an environment to realize our didactical goals. On the one hand the environment consists of an administration and communication environment: The virtual university that provides access to and information about the course. On the other hand we provide the groupware environment BSCW (Basic Support for Cooperative Work) for shared documents and further communication. The laboratory component is an ORACLE instance with team-accounts accessible via the iSQL*Plus browser interface.