This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project from Microprof, Inc. is a research effort to establish the feasibility of an authoring system for the creation of multi-user oriented discovery learning environments with built-in support for diverse instructional architectures. The proposed authoring system will enable content creators to "embed" domain knowledge in a series of activities. The learners "unlock" the target knowledge through successful interactions among themselves and between learners and the discovery environment. The system will foster the creation of inherently multi-user-oriented content and will be accessible through PCs or networked TVs. Microprof's concept of an authoring infrastructure that will foster the creation of content for the Internet market stands in contrast to an approach involving the simple translation of content created for traditional stand-alone single-user PCs. In view of the increasing access to the Internet by students in urban schools and the current low cost of gaining access to the networked world from home, Microprof proffers to create a brand new segment in the emerging online industry: educational multi-user games.
