Students are not only active, but also actors.

In Web-based environments, learning activities range from multiple choice questionnaires to problem solving. Simulations are indeed virtual learning environments as well. While originally restricted to physical models, they cover now a broad spectrum of domains such as economics, politics, biology… However, what is more specific to virtual learning environments is the set of activities in which the students construct and share objects. Most often these objects are Web pages. Writing activities (producing syntheses, study reports, newspapers, ...) are very popular in schools. Students are not restricted to consuming Web information, they become information producers, they enter in the game. There is quite a difference between writing a critique of a novel which will be read only by the teacher or which can be read by potentially anybody.

Often the writing activity is per se the educational goal, but in many cases, it is just the end point which drives a variety of earlier activities such as site visits, observations,experiments, interviews, literature review, ... (see section 1.7). Up to several weeks of work are carried out upstream to move to the Web. This work can be integrated in the virtual learning environments. For instance by enabling students to share informal notes, enabling teachers to provide references, by adding scheduling tools, ... Many Web-based environments re-instantiate, in more recent technology, the founding principles of Freinet’s project-based pedagogy, not only by their use of tools (for instance e-mail and web-page replace letters and printed newspapers used by Freinet), but also by their concern for multidisciplinarity. For instance, a condition for schools to participate into the «Young Reporters for Environment» is that teachers from various disciplines (e.g. biology,physics, geography, …) agree to articulate their course around an environmental issue.

Texts and Web pages are not the only products that student teams build together. It can be computer programmes, graphical objects, .... and even the environment itself. For instance, in the Pangea project, kids from various countries (and various languages) code signed a virtual island, which required them to work out problems related to ecology, democracy, geography, and so forth.

In other words, the notion of a learning activity in virtual learning environments refers to something richer than in individual courseware, closer to the notion of project. The difference between other constructivist environments and what virtual environments potentially offer can be described as making students not only active, but also actors, i.e. members and contributors of the social and information space.