A glimpse of the future of online teaching and learning environments can be seen at the Croquet Project, an open-source collaboration being developed by a team of six highly skilled and experienced educational technology architects and a host of partner institutions and corporations worldwide. Croquet, as noted on its website, "is a combination of computer software and network architecture that supports deep collaboration and resource sharing among large numbers of users within the context of a large-scale distributed information system. Along with its ability to deliver compelling 3D visualization and simulations, the Croquet system’s components are designed with a focus on enabling massively multi-user peer-to-peer collaboration and communication."

Croquet is slated to release an Alpha version this Fall 2005, says Julian Lombardi, one of the six architects of the project, who is also manager of a software R&D group at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Division of Information Technology, where he helps define and lead university-wide initiatives that seek to transform teaching and learning through the use of technology.

Croquet is difficult to describe with words and/or screen shots. "People who see it always say ‘Oh my God, I read your website and I thought it was amazing, but I had no idea of how absolutely transformative this technology is until now,’" Lombardi says, referring to the reaction he gets when demoing Croquet to educators. "The other thing they say is ‘I don’t know how I could possibly explain what I saw to another person.’"

Several papers about the Croquet Project are excellent reads for the finer details of how this educational technology really works and what its implications are for the future of online teaching and learning (see reference section at the end of this article). Basically, the development of Croquet takes into account that our current, primarily text- and HTML-based user interfaces and processes for online teaching and learning are inept and dull. Much more powerful and interactive educational technologies, partially driven by the increase in Internet connectivity speed and the decrease in bandwidth cost, are on the near horizon.

The power of Croquet revolves around putting people inside "visually immersive online social spaces," that are similar to what people see in the world of virtual gaming technology, as noted in the popular book "Digital Game-Based Learning," by Marc Prensky (2004, McGraw Hill with distribution by Paragon House). Part of the idea is to replicate online the kind of unstructured, serendipitous and typically most-memorable learning-centered interactions that students experience outside the classroom in such places as the student union, coffee shop, dormitory, steps of the humanities building, etc.

It’s all accomplished by integrating 3D virtual spaces, 3D development tools, voice, video, e-mail, chat, instant messaging, avatars, access to learning object repositories, real-time co-browsing and co-editing capabilities, simulation software, shared content areas, and more, inside a single collaborative online environment. So, in effect, if two or more people have Croquet installed on their computers, and they all have decent Internet connections, all kinds of fun and interesting learning experiences can occur.

Here’s one version of how Croquet can be used, as described by Lombardi: "[Instead of an avatar], you can have a live video of yourself moving through the space [if your computer has a digital video camera connected to it]. There are no bubbles with text in them. You just walk up to people and talk to them with your voice. For example, you are sitting at your desk talking to somebody; you are conferencing with somebody, but it is not just a standard conference page. You are moving through the 3D space with a video of your face, and when you touch things in the space, another person can see you touching them. When you click on something in the virtual space, a connection between your video and the thing you are clicking on is visible to third parties. Then you can immediately create an opening in the fabric of the space and jump through it [these appear as doorways in space, and there are no walls in this 3D environment] and have people follow you into a new world, and the new world is immediately published to everyone who is online at that time. You can then conjure web pages and show people web pages in the space, and they can scroll your web pages. You can highlight; they can highlight, and you can talk about it."

At present, the developers of this innovative technology - some of whom have been working on this stuff for more than 20 years - are testing and further developing Croquet’s core technology in a variety of settings. For example, in February, Croquet architect Mark McCahill, well known as the creator of GOPHER (a precursor to today’s Web browsers) and currently the director of the University Technology Development Center, Office of Information Technology, University of Minnesota, introduced Croquet to a graduate-level Rhetoric class with a focus on instructional technology and design. As noted on McCahill’s personal blog, the students faced the challenge of learning how to use this new technology, referred to as acquiring new "driving skills," by using a different kind of mouse button to select and grab objects. One of the end results of that first class was that the students were fascinated and kept playing with Croquet after the class ended. In the second class meeting, these same students learned how to navigate through various doorways into different virtual worlds. They then collaboratively created an idea map in Croquet space about how this tool could be used inside a modern online learning environment.

Another example of where Croquet is being further developed, -among a good number of Croquet development endeavors  can be found at the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS), which is a consortium of four University of California campuses: UC Berkeley, UC Davis, UC Merced, and UC Santa Cruz. As noted at the CITRIS website, CITRIS has built a "Collaborate Gallery Builder," on top of Croquet. The Collaborative Gallery Builder is a "system designed to allow researchers in the humanities to interact with 3-dimensional artifacts and related digital content inside of a collaborative virtual environment." The system "creates digital galleries, which are simple virtual structures emulating real-life exhibitions and collections." Users create avatars that enter the space and interact with each other and the galleries. "Examples of interaction include discussion, annotation of artifacts, adding hyperlinks to artifacts, as well as introducing new items into the gallery and modifying the layout of the gallery and contents."

Lombardi says that the formation of a Croquet consortium is currently in progress and that the cooperation among all the working partners is moving along very well, with a growing body of worldwide educators showing keen interest in Croquet’s further development. "The croquet license is one that is very permissive and very open- source," says Lombardi. "You do not have to belong to the community; it is totally open."

Lombardi adds that, overall, the project is comprised of "very forward-looking people who understand that the current set of user interfaces that we are pushing to our students are inadequate to capture the real value of what is going on in teaching and research."

CITRUS Collaborative Gallery Software, Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society.
www.citris-uc.org/hosted/projects/ith/gallery/

Croquet Project Website.
http://croquetproject.org/

M. Lombardi, "Standing on the Plateau Looking Forward: The Croquet Project," EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (Formerly NLII) (2005). www.educause.edu/LibraryDetailPage/666?ID=NLI0530