Have you ever observed a modern student work?
She will be sitting at the keyboard typing away on a term paper. Every couple of minutes stopping to type a short message into an instant messaging window. There is also a browser window open in the background and she is reading and posting to a message board about the latest strategies for her favorite online game. She finishes up her paper after doing some quick fact checking on the university’s online library. Her term paper is complete. She finishes the assignment by uploading the paper to the professors website. Taking off her headphones she shuts down the mp3 player and closes all of the open windows on her screen. It is after midnight, and she has a face to face class in less than seven hours. She smiles to herself, it was a very productive evening working online.

The tools of technology and the internet are all around us. Some people would find them amazing, but to this girl they are commonplace. Most of the time they are used in informal and unstructured ways. This class will change that.

The course Online Collaboration, Research and Problem Solving will teach the student how to use these online tools of technology in a highly structured and productive way.

There are three parts to the course. The first part will introduce the tools that will be used. In the second part we will structure a virtual classroom that contains the tools and set the rules for their use. Finally we will use the tools, and the classroom to perform research and solve a problem. The entire class is online, and the students and instructor will never meet face to face.