ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the goals and philosophies underlying the design of activities that help students learn from others, examines the role of technology in promoting such opportunities, and suggests principles to guide designers. We identify common design decisions and use research findings to show how these decisions could impact science learning. Technologyenhanced learning environments offer opportunities for those designing collaborative forums to include online discussions, support asynchronous interactions, and study specific curriculum design patterns. These environments support research comparing compelling alternative designs and yield embedded assessments for analyzing impacts. The complex, interacting set of decisions necessary for design of collaborative forums calls for a process of iterative design. We report on a case study involving iterative design of an online discussion to examine the benefit of this process. We synthesize this research in a set of preliminary design principles that are linked to specific features of collaborative forums. We invite others to contribute to this effort by critiquing the principles, adding features, and adding principles.
