Internet Environments for Science Education

7Fostering Productive Collaboration Offline and Online: Learning From Each Other

Christopher M. HoadleyPennsylvania State University

This volume describes a number of innovations in the field of Internet-based education from a research group that helped invent the general approach. Some readers may have come upon this volume hoping that it would contain simple prescriptions on how to use the Internet for learning as determined by simple either-or comparisons, the “hard research” that is so lauded by experimental traditionalists. However, as any teacher who has tried to implement a research-based innovation knows, there are no simple answers. Research is important, and the defining characteristic of research is an empirical stance, a willingness ...