We have written this book with the intent of serving several audiences within the science education community of practice. Foremost, our book is intended to serve as a practical resource for science programs and community college and university-level science instructors building new and/or transitioning existing aspects of their science curriculum or courses, whether fully online or blended. Accordingly, we provide both a theoretical and practical background on online science learning as well as a model for course development. Moreover, we have deliberately presented many of the best practice cases organized by key scientific areas so that science educators can get a quick view and be inspired by contemporary best practice examples in their own mathematics or natural science disciplines. Although our perspective is through the window of science, our hope is that practitioners of online learning from other disciplines will also find the topics, review of technologies, and strategies informative.

In addition, this book should be useful for instructional designers involved with the development of online scientific materials. We anticipate that this book will enhance the dialogue between instructional design staff and science faculty. Utilizing this book’s analysis of practical work and collaboration as well as its review of socio-economic (i.e., valuation) aspects of science, trends in online science, and online science pedagogy; this tome can be employed as an effective resource or text for education department courses on science at the upper division and/or graduate level. Similarly, with the rapidly growing interest in augmenting K-12 education with online activities and resources, this book is also intended as a reference for secondary school educators and administrators. Lastly, we share deeply in the concern regarding America’s “failure” in science education over the last few decades and its long-term consequences for America’s prosperity. Consequently, this book is intended to inform and motivate policy makers to explore and make the most of this important and emerging area of science instruction to increase scientific capital, both here and abroad.

Kevin F. Downing

Jennifer K. Holtz

DePaul University, Chicago, USA

October 2007

References

Bell, R., & Tight, M. (1993). Open universities: A British tradition? Buckingham: The Society for Research into Higher Education and Open University Press.

Guri-Rosenblit, S. (2005). “Distance education” and “e-learning”: Not the same thing.

Higher Education, 49(4), 467-493.

Acknowledgments

The authors extend a special thanks to the three anonymous reviewers whose thoughtful comments improved this book and whose enthusiasm for the project was very welcome. We thank IGI Global for their forms of assistance. Our sincere appreciation to the authors and organizations whose permission to reproduce original figures and Web graphics was integral to communicating the richness of current online science efforts. We thank our colleagues at DePaul University for their many types of support, with special thanks to Dr. Ruth Gannon-Cook and Dr. Beth Rubin for the distance learning expertise they routinely share with us and for their enthusiasm for this project. Special thanks also go to Dr. Michelle Navarre-Cleary and Dr. Gabriele Strohschen. Our thanks to DePaul’s University Research Council and Quality of Instruction Council, for their financial support.