Preliminary evaluation of a virtual meeting room for supporting group work

The Virtual Meeting Room (VMR) system is a part of the CORONET collaborative learning system. This system provides support for knowledge sharing in the context of collaborative learning and working. This paper describes the preliminary evaluation of the VMR in supporting group work. In this evaluation, a group activity was planned to compare two conditions: using VMR and not using it. The overall results indicate that using VMR helped the group to finish the given task with less effort and in less time. The findings are discussed in the light of previous research that examined technological support for group work.