COOPER (Collaborative Open Environment for Project Centered Learning)

The project has developed the COOPER Integrated Platform. This is characterized by the following principal features: tight integration of the asynchronous Web application with synchronous tools, supported by using state-of-the-art VOI (voice over internet) technology; ease of deployment (by means of code generators), ease of customization (by means of wizards), ease of use (by all the actors of the process, including administrators, students, academic and industrial tutors, mentors, general public, alumni).

The results of the COOPER project can help universities and corporations improve their infrastructure and methodologies in project-centred learning, especially in the following learning environments:

• Graduate (or post-graduate) university studies, involving students and lecturers participating in focused projects (e.g., masters or specialisation courses) who are located at different institutions and having diverse backgrounds;
• Company universities and company training that involves multi-national participants from company sites; customers which are geographically dispersed and need to participate in launching a new product or technology; or corporate teams involved in product or project-centred training.

From the technology perspective, the project also provided a basis for cross-disciplinary innovations in information technology and related fields.

The integrated COOPER platform is available for downloading from the exploitation page of the COOPER website. It is free for academic users under an academic license agreement. Potential users can find on the website a number of flash demos showing the basic interfaces and functionalities of the COOPER platform.

The project partners will continue to collaborate as a network of expert centres for supporting the exploitation and deployment of the COOPER technologies.