Flexible virtual environments for teaching and learning

Distance learning boosts the development of Web-based software aimed at supporting teaching and learning processes. More recently, information technology became part of pedagogies since their conception, especially for those called "pedagogical architectures" focused mainly on learning and on the processes of creation, discovery and invention. This scenario presented a new challenge: software tools need to facilitate the expression of individual idiosyncrasies and teams as well as incorporate multiple fine-tuned ways of working. It became necessary to design flexible virtual environments that meet the needs of its users, allowing runtime changes in their structures and interfaces. In this paper we present a platform designed under a novel paradigm for designing virtual environments, with flexibility to be combined and to define several virtual environments, runtime changeable without loss of data. As proof of concept, a software platform was developed and used to model and implement a total of 11 well-known virtual environments spanning from usual ones like forum, blog and wiki, to more complex examples. Finally, in order to evaluate the platform's ability to accommodate changes, a case-study was carried out in a real-world event with a class of 10 multipliers (teachers responsible for training other teachers) that reported their use of the platform's resources available so far.