Roles, culture, and computer-supported collaborative work on planet oit

The Geology Explorer is a multi-user geologic simulation created by North Dakota State University's World Wide Web Instructional Committee (WWWIC). This paper briefly describes the recent developments to the Geology Explorer Planet Oit software, both pedagogically and organizationally. The difference between group and individual goals is described, and how educational and cultural theories contributed to their creation. The results of a recent pilot study are reported, and research directions indicated by those results are outlined.