9353353 Rowe Curriculum development projects depend for their success on fruitful collaboration between developers and teachers. In many projects, however, trial sites are spread around the country making on going communication and feedback cumbersome. As a result projects suffer because developers do not receive and respond to feedback in a timely manner. The purpose of this project is to create a viable electronic learning community in conjunction with a science curriculum development project for middle schools. In theory the potential contribution of electronic networks is great. In practice, however, few have survived and none have been studied carefully enough to provide a useful knowledge base on which to build others. Two NSF funded projects will collaborate, one in curriculum and one that has developed communication software especially suited to help people who are geographically dispersed work together to produce better results. One product of this study will be the preparation of guidelines for the formation of new electronic learning communities. ***
