As the Secretary of State for International Cooperation suggests, the recognition of the role of ICT in cooperation is already present at the Master Plan for Spanish Cooperation 2005-2008. The plan assums the job of promoting the use of these technologies as a means to improve the quality of the cooperation actions, noting in particular the potential of ICT in the areas of the coverage of social needs, the development of the production, the integration of the poor for economic and social participation and institutional strengthening.

This work was a first step in the recognition of ICT as an instrument in the development cooperation in this century. There are many facets and roles that ICT can play in the system of cooperation, and in this sense, ICT as a tool to facilitate internal communication and knowledge management is considered useful, indeed these are valuable issues in decentralized systems such as cooperation.

Despite the fact that these virtual environments are recent, it is difficult to make a single definition that reflects all and each of the different types of virtual environments. Those based on the design of materials that allow self-directed learning process were mentioned above. This self-sufficient  material  must contain all the information, the sequence and processes required to learn specific content independently, without teacher support. This allows self-directed and autonomous learning, the student decides the time, place, sequence, rhythm, including the depth of the learning.

Very close to these environments are the ones based on emulation. While we could say that they are only a refinement of these envirotments, it must be noted that they incorporate the potential of the emulation and simulation  of computers. Thus, tutorials or guidance systems incorporate intelligent on-line and off-line aids, actually they aim at personalizing the content and the way each student addresses it.