Preface

Purpose

There is an enormous and swiftly growing literature for online learning practices, but relatively little attention has been paid to the special attributes and pedagogy of online science at the community college and university level. As regular authors of natural science courses and instructional materials for the online program for adults at DePaul University, we have long wondered why there was no up-to-date and expansive examination of the best practices in online science learning for university faculty, no general survey of current and emerging technologies for teaching science online, little consideration of the role of online science education as a burgeoning force for building American and global science capital, and no pragmatic models to inform the comprehensive development of online science programs, courses, and constituent learning activities. This book concentrates on this void by providing a general treatment of online science learning in the sciences—a subject area we affirm is an emergent and vital area of science education. While we review and incorporate selected examples from vast literature in computer science and engineering, we have purposefully constrained the chief focus of our treatment to online science learning in the natural sciences.

The other fields within the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) knowledge areas are certainly deserving of comprehensive treatments of their own online learning practices, but are beyond the scope of this book. Likewise, while our approach is largely U.S. in focus, we have tried, whenever possible, to incorporate non-U.S. considerations and concerns, and hope that this effort is apparent.

Educational Context

The current fervor over distance learning in schools and universities inspires the impression that it is an educational construct borne recently of the computer age, but this is certainly not the case. For almost two centuries, learning separated spatially from teaching has been an approach to acquiring knowledge (Bell & Tight, 1993). In contrast, online learning is a relatively young format for distance teaching and is fostered by and parallels the contemporary revolution in communication and information technologies (CIT). The rapid proliferation and tacit acceptance of online instruction in higher education and school instruction has effectively made the terms “distance education” or “distance learning,” in practical usage, synonymous with “online learning”. Likewise, the term “distance education” is often used interchangeably but unsuitably with “e-learning”, which is actually learning that relies on CIT technologies in a variety of contexts; thus it significantly overlaps, but not necessarily involves, distance education (Guri-Rosenblit, 2005).

In the hierarchy of learning forms in the “lifelong learning” framework (Figure 1), online science learning is nested within distance learning, e-learning, and online learning, respectively. Other important learning types such as blended learning (also called hybrid and mixed) and mobile learning (also called m-learning) can also be used in conjunction with online science learning.

Figure 1. The domain of online science learning positioned within lifelong learning framework