HOW THE INTERNET FACILITATES LEARNING AS DIALOG: DESIGN CONSIDERATIONS FOR ONLINE DISCUSSIONS.

Online learning through the Internet is seen to be pervasive in today's educational and corporate sectors. Online learning also promises all kinds of possibilities for learning and this paper makes an attempt to clarify some of these issues. Instead of promising all kinds of learning, we suggest that the Internet affords distributed expertise, contextualized engagement and dialog, and reflection and evolution. From these three main tenets, we conceptualize design principles and considerations in order to make learning meaningful. These design considerations capitalize on the technologies present and in this sense transforms learning processes in contrast to more traditional approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]