Experience on the Implementation of a Collaborative Virtual Environment for Educational Applications

Collaborative virtual environments (CVEs) can be seen as resulting from the convergence of research on virtual reality and computer-supported cooperative work. In this sense, the development of a CVE involves activities related to the implementation of a distributed system as well as the construction of virtual worlds that will be accessed by the users. This article intends to explain the main development aspects of such environments, based on the experience obtained in the development of the collaborative virtual environment-virtual museum (CVE-VM), a virtual reality system that works on the Internet, to support collaborative learning. The performed implementation is described and exemplified, and the most important issues are pointed-out, aiming to contribute to improve the quality of other CVE and virtual worlds that are being developed.