A student sitting in the Info Commons at one of the workstations opens a web browser to the IC home page and selects the option "My Class," which opens a search window in which she types in the course number and instructor. Reaching the course home page, she checks to see if her project group members are online in the class chat room--3 out of 5 are (1 in another area of the IC and 2 from their separate residence halls).

They agree to review together a particularly complex concept first presented in class several weeks ago. Each searches for the lecture and slides in which the instructor talked about globalization and its effect on cultural interconnections among different ethnic groups in New Zealand as exemplified in changes in language. At some point in that day's lecture the instructor also demonstrated a computer model simulation of the global future that the students want to discuss with each other.

Each of the 4 students clicks on the "search class content" icon on the class homepage while remaining in the chat room. One searches for the day he thinks that lecture occurred. One searches for the key words "New Zealand" and "computer simulation". After a few seconds, they each have the class content for the correct day.

One student opens up the video of the instructor's lecture, which alternates between mini-lectures and portions of a video from PBS about New Zealand ethnic groups. Also part of the lecture, captured in an audio stream, are interviews with individuals over a series of 10 years to demonstrate the changes in language of different groups.

As the video plays the students view the outline for the day in another window and, in yet another window, the computer model that the instructor demonstrated in the class. Students navigate freely back and forth in the time sequence of the lecture in any single window.

At the same time, a fourth member of their group is meeting with a tutor in the Freshman Year Center, and they are online looking at the same lecture on globalization and ethnic groups in New Zealand. Using key words, they are quickly able to locate the part of the lecture that the student needs help with, and together they listen to the instructor's explanations during the lecture, pausing the video often to talk about the ideas presented until the student understands them. Having worked with a number of other students having trouble with this same set of concepts, the tutor looks for the instructor in the Teaching Teams Office to let him know that students are finding that particular topic difficult to understand.