ABSTRACT
Technology changes what we do and what we can do. People change on account of technology. Technology in support of learning and instruction is no different. Instructional technology changes what teachers and learners do and can do. This is especially true when the Internet and distributed technologies are taken into consideration. Learning research has also evolved and increased our understanding of how people learn different things in different situations. There has been a trend to apply emerging instructional technologies to support learning and instruction in ever more challenging and complex domains (Spector and Anderson, 2000). Such a trend is quite natural. Once it is understood how to use technology to support mastery of simple skills, it makes good sense to explore more advanced uses of technology. We support this trend and believe, along with many others, that technology can be effectively used in distributed learning environments to support learning in and about complex systems, which is the focus of the discussion in this chapter (Spector and Anderson, 2000).
