Easy access to content experts and current information online enhances their potential. Collaborative learning is important because the participants are not only learning content and knowledge in NetCourses, but they also practice and experience an authentic process of developing their understanding in a social context. Purposeful dialogue evolves in a context of a self-correcting, supportive community. NetCourses incorporate in-person interactions as well, to ameliorate the potential alienation of a completely virtual community. For secondary students, the virtual students and teachers are supported by local site coordinators who check in personally with all NetCourse participants.
Cooperation is also a key component of our model.
Success relies on the cooperation of participants with one another online for small group assignments and activities. Teachers in our professional development courses are challenged to continue working together after the courses are over on new teaching and learning strategies, and new structures that support new ways of teaching and learning at their local sites. Because NetCourses are embedded in an arena of interconnectedness, they most closely resemble traditional seminar courses, in which learning comes from reflection on critical questions and exchange among participants via discussion of common reading, experimentation, or investigation of new subject matter. We believe that NetCourses encourage more student-centered inquiry learning, compared to traditional models of instruction. Teachers are encouraged to be facilitators and guides in the process of learning and students are encouraged to take more initiative to pursue a topic of interest, an unpopular position or argument, or engage in deeper inquiry investigations that challenge their interests and current understanding.