Construction and evaluation of Flash Media Server based collaborative virtual hydraulic circuits/equipments

Collaboration generally leads to better learning outcomes than individual work, and efficient communication is of essential importance to collaborative learning environments. Adobe's Flash Media Server (FMS) together with its Flash provides an efficient a platform for developing collaborative learning environments. Using FMS, we have designed and developed a collaborative learning environment targeted for students' self-teaching of hydraulic experiments. The collaborative learning environment consists of multi-user collaboration supporting courseware modules called as virtual hydraulic circuits/equipments. In this paper, the Modeler-View-Controller (MVC) architecture designed for the collaborative courseware modules was provided, and key steps of developing such modules using FMS were described. The effect of the courseware modules in helping students in making preparations for actual experiments was examined, and students' attitudes toward the modules were surveyed and analyzed. Results showed that collaborative courseware modules can lead to better learning outcome, and efficient communication especially audio communication is more preferred by the tested students. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Comput Appl Eng Educ 20: 579–593, 2012