Soo-Young and Scott are involved in the ongoing evaluation of the online learning communities that form the foundation of the One Sky, Many Voices (OSMV) project's curricular units. Hurricanes, Kids as Global Scientist (KGS) and Shared Air are all weather / atmospheric middle school science curricular units designed and implemented by a collaborative team of educational researchers and atmospheric scientists, and computer science engineers. In the current iteration of KGS (February 15th through April 9th, 1999) over 260 schools from around the world will participate. This includes over 10,000 students, 50 atmospheric scientists, 20 undergraduate Message Board monitors. The theoretical framework of all three programs is based on a social constructivist perspective on learning, where discourse between peers and experts is considered critical to the learning process. To support this dialogue OSMV uses a Message Board (a threaded, web-based discussion tool) for students and a listserv for teachers (though this iteration there will be a Message Board used for teachers as well). These online communication tools provide the medium for peers from different parts of the world to shared their ideas on the weather (for students) and implementation ideas and reflections on a collaborative inquiry based curriculum (for teachers). Soo is interested in how the students interactions via the Message Board can be a change agent in their understandings in science. Scott is interested in structuring the teacher online support to create an online community of practice for teachers involved in the OSMV programs.

Soo-Young and Scott both use a combination of descriptive statistics, discourse analysis, interviewing, and on-site observations to examine issues surrounding online communities. There are also some aspects of design research as we are constantly trying to improve the structure and usefulness of the tools. This means we are using both formative and summative types of evaluation in our work.

• Scalability. How scalable are these programs and the technology that support them? What changes have to be made to the way researcher support the Message Boards and listservs if the number of participants increases by two or three times? What about ten times? How much can the on-line community be self-sustainable? (e.g. without 20 undergrad monitors)?
• Structuring online environments. How can the structure of the on-line environments be changed to encourage social constructivist learning for both students and teachers? At the same time, how does the structure of the on-line environments change/affect the structure of classroom environment? What kinds of discourse seeds or guidance are required to encourage students and teachers to consider their online community a true community of practice? How can the tools themselves be better structured to reflect a social constructivist theoretical framework?
• Assessment (or evaluation) of new learning experiences. What kinds of new learning experiences do students and teachers have as they participate in the on-line communities? Are the experiences valuable for learning? If so then, how can we measure them?

• Lee, S.Y. and Songer, N.B. (1998) Electronic Discourse as an Essential Component for Building and Sustaining Electronic Community of Science Learners. Proceedings of the Third International Conference on the Learning Sciences (ICLS '98).
• Songer, N.B. (1998a) Can Technology Bring Students Closer to Science? in K. Tobin and B. Fraser (Eds.) The International Handbook of Science Education,. The Netherlands: Kluwer. pp. 333-348.
• Songer, N.B. (1998b) Kids as Global Scientists. in T. Owen and R. Owston (Eds.) The Learning Highway: Smart Students and the Net, (A winner of the New York Public Library's Books for the Teen Age Award). Toronto: Key Porter Books. Chapter 22, pp. 159-162.
• Songer, N.B. (1996) Exploring Learning Opportunities in Coordinated Network-Enhanced Classrooms: A case of kids as global scientists. The Journal of the Learning Sciences 5(4), 297-327.