Over recent years, educational institutions have been making increasing use of virtual environments to set up collaborative activities for learners. While it is recognized that teachers play an important role in facilitating learner collaboration online, they may not have the necessary skills to do so successfully. Thus, a small-scale professional…

As Virtual Learning Environments (VLE) supported by synchronous technologies such as Synchronous Learning Management Systems (SLMSs) are still new to distance language professionals, criteria guiding the evaluation of the appropriate SLMSs for Distance Language Education (DLE) are urgently needed. This article proposes and discusses such criteria.…