Four soft tops

British university teams won four of the ten prizes in the European software competition, Easa2000, in Rotterdam last week. Groups from the universities of Bath, Cambridge, Huddersfield and the Open University wrote applications for music teaching, languages, social policy and psychology. Winners were selected from about 300 entries. Calma, from the Huddersfield team, is an extendable courseware-creation environment enabling music lecturers to produce their own teaching materials. CommuniCat, from Cambridge, is a multilingual, computer-adaptive test of language ability. Focus, the OU's bid, is a CD-based application that contains video files of child behaviour. CSP, from Bath, is a set of six multimedia CD-Roms with web links, which enables comparison of social policies relating to unemployment.

Details: www.easa-award.net