Use of FirstClass as a collaborative learning environment

This paper draws on the authors' experience in using SoftArc Intranet First Class(TM) as a collaborative learning environment and discusses and exempli fies the pros and cons of choosing this system for running online courses. After a short description of FirstClass and its educational uses, the paper focuses on some case studies: two courses developed and run by the Institu te for Educational Technology of the Italian Research Council. These are us ed as a basis for qualitative considerations about the strengths and weakne sses of FirstClass, including occasional comparisons with the performance o f similar systems. In the exposition, a distinction is made between the vie wpoints of the course student, the course tutor and designer, and the cours e administrator. The main conclusion is that FirstClass lends itself very w ell to managing collaborative learning processes at a distance, providing a very simple and easy to understand interface which can be configured by th e course designers according to different design principles. As far as the system's weaknesses are concerned, we must mention that it does not offer s ufficient support for the web design tasks that course tutors, designers an d students sometimes have to carry out. Moreover, it lacks nd hoc functions for the analysis of communication flows, which are very useful for formati ve evaluation purposes.