Supporting flexible collaborative distance learning in the CURE platform

At the German Distance Learning University, five collaborative distance learning scenarios have been recently identified by students and teachers as an important future form of collaborative learning in the university's virtual learning space. An analysis of these scenarios showed a great variance between them and a need to support runtime tailoring of the respective learning environments. Since no existing learning platform addresses all the needs, the CURE collaborative learning platform was developed to support the implementation of such a variety of tailorable learning environments. CURE is based on a room concept and supports the implementation and runtime tailoring of collaborative distance learning environments for our scenarios. Initial experience indicates its applicability.