The College of Exploration, is a not-for-profit educational organization, with 501c3 status, located in the  Commonwealth of Virginia USA. It designs, develops and delivers courses for learners of all ages, with a particular emphasis on Web-based courses and workshops for teachers, students, business people, and the general public.

The College of Exploration was incorporated in 1991. Initial development work in the application of multimedia conferencing as a distributed  learning environment and the development of the original concept was funded by grants from IBM multimedia division and the Annenburg Foundation. Educational program design and course development and delivery has been accomplished in collaboration with Public Broadcasting System for its Teacher Mathline Program, and with the Department of Defense  Dependents Schools (DoDDS) for its distance learning programs for teachers and high school students. Support is being  provided to the University of Maryland System for the design, development, delivery and evaluation of a series of courses for teachers at international schools that will lead to a Masters degree in Education.

Since organizing its first course for the DoDDS schools, TCOE has taught in-person and distance learning courses to over 350 teachers or potential teachers.

Mission & Philosophy

Our mission is to provide learners with opportunities to explore their inner and outer worlds and to come to know more about themselves and their relationships with the world around them and other people.

The mission is accomplished by designing learning opportunities that are interdisciplinary and encourage immediate real-world application in the lives of participants. A particular emphasis is placed on interweaving the development of leadership capability, environmental awareness and sensitivity, with the ethical application of technology to learning and society as a whole.

The Virtual Campus and Webconference Center

Most courses are offered on our  web-based virtual campus.  The design of the campus is focused on learner-centered activities that occur in learning conversations within a computer conferencing environment. 

The virtual campus is located on the World Wide Web.  It is connected to the Web through a multple redundant connections. We have a network of, Linux and NT servers. The system supports Web-computer conferencing with Caucus software, Web page hosting and development, Lotus Notes Domino capability, FTP capability, , chat, database connectivity with Cold Fusion software, and e-mail, and e-mail list hosting. The virtual campus also uses an NT server for audio and video streaming from Real Networks and Microsoft Media Servers. Video conferencing is achieved with commercial video conferencing companies and also using CU-See Me software. Multimedia presentations are also made using a variety of other groupware products and individual software products.
 

Technical Overview & Capabilities