Virtual Collaborative Learning

Abstract

New technologies are used increasingly to enhance people's lives in many fields, and education is a very important sector that can benefit from technological development. The idea of using technology to facilitate and enhance learning, known as electronic learning, has led to the development of a wide range of applications and implementations worldwide. Electronic learning can offer new opportunities for developing countries by increasing access to education and improving learning outcomes. This chapter presents Virtual Collaborative Learning (VCL) as a modern technology-enhanced team-learning arrangement based on a constructivist learning paradigm. By utilizing Web 2.0 tools to empower and enhance classical e-Learning methods, VCL reaches far beyond classical Web-Based Training. Opportunities and challenges of VCL for developing countries will be discussed based on a long European teaching and research experience.