In order to establish a distant education system, it is first required to create a virtual learning system environment. A detailed literature search has revealed the existence of some "Open-Source" systems such as "Claroline, Moodle etc." Each system has been investigated in detail and it was found that "Moodle" is the one closest to the NEU education system. A study has shown that the instructor-learner relationship is poor in existing systems. The "Grewptool" collaborative editor has been used to create various additional features in order to satisfy the group work requirements. This paper is about a pilot study which has been carried out at the Near East University during the 2004/5 Fall Semester using the Moodle together with Grewptool. The system has been tested with 40 students taking the "Java" and the "Pascal" programming courses and the results of the research and a survey are given in the paper. (Contains 2 figures.)