UniFlex A WWW-environment for project-based collaborative learning

Increasing demands for remote on-line education are changing the way teaching and learning is performed. New behavior in using pedagogy and supporting technology is needed to drive the learning process. To facilitate the use of services for selected activities to participants in on-line education, a web site named UniFlex (University Flexible learning) has been developed and brought into use. The site is a comprehensive set of bookmarks including course taking, upload/download, and - of special significance - collaborative on-line project work. UniFlex has been developed to meet the requirement for a simple and cheap personalized interactive site, supporting problem oriented and project organized study form, which has characterized Aalborg University for more than 25 years. UniFlex supports a virtual group room for collaborative work as a key facility. UniFlex has downloadable templates, which includes newly, developed pedagogical methods supporting teachers producing course materials. UniFlex is used as the selected site to prevent inconsistency and loss of information. The site is based on the most commonly used Internet architecture and tools and is structured relatively simple to ease technical maintenance. Web interfaces for all type of users are developed to ease information and document upload, user administration and more. The product is used at Aalborg University open distance education for "Master of Industrial Information technology" (MII) and "Master in Mobile Information Communication" (MMIC), and other collaborative applications. The majority of the users are very satisfied with the product since it is simple, inexpensive, has a reasonable speed and easy to use and maintain.