Students can become involved in online research projects. After teaching students how to search the Web for information, a project could require them to search for information on a specific topic. More importantly, it teaches a student how to solve a problem and given an opportunity to solve it. Students or groups of students can compete to find a solution to a problem first for projects designed on the Web. These problems could be knowledge based such as identifying a particular species of bird.
More complex projects are also available.
An Urbana teacher has developed a class project where each group of students create their own stock portfolio. The groups perform research before selecting their stocks and justify their selections. After creating their portfolio, the groups track the value of their portfolio and compete to see whose performs the best. By creating a competitive environment, the competition encourages students to solve it to the best of their abilities. The groups can share their results, allowing students to see other ways of solving the same problem.