Supporting interactive collaboration on the Web with CORK P.L. Isenhour * , M.B. Rosson, J.M. Carroll Center for Human±Computer Interaction, Department of Computer Science, Virginia Tech, 660 McBryde Hall, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA 24061, USA Abstract The World Wide Web has served as a medium for collaboration since its inception. Web-based collaboration has, however, been dominated by systems supporting asynchronous activities such as sharing documents and participating in discussion forums. Supporting interactive, synchronous collaboration on the Web has proven much more challenging. In this paper we describe three of the challenges encountered in the context of supporting network-based collaboration among middle and high school science students: integrating synchronous and asynchronous modes of interaction, minimizing consumption of bandwidth, and adapting non-collaborative software components for collaborative use. We then present the Content Object Replication Kit, a toolkit for building inter- active Java-based collaborative systems for use on the Web. q 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. Keywords: Synchronous and asynchronous collaboration; Collaborative software for education; Groupware architecture; Java object replication 1. Introduction Over the last four years, the Learning in Networked Communities LiNC) project at Virginia Tech has developed and deployed a variety of network-based collaboration tools in middle- and high-school classrooms. Our goal has been to support synchronous and asynchronous collaboration on group projects among students at the same or different schools, as well as between students and community mentors. Supporting computer- mediated collaboration across classrooms highlights several challenges that are relevant to Web-based collaborative systems in general. Three of these challenges are integration P.L. Isenhour et al. / Interacting with Computers 13 2001) 655±676 655 Interacting with Computers 13 2001) 655±676 0953-5438/01/$ - see front matter q 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. PII: S0953-543800)00045-X www.elsevier.com/locate/intcom * Corresponding author. Tel.: 11-540-231-3121; fax: 11-540-231-6075. E-mail addresses: isenhour@cs.vt.edu P.L. Isenhour), rosson@cs.vt.edu M.B. Rosson), carroll@cs.vt.edu J.M. Carroll).