Fostering Distributed Science Learning Through Collaborative Technologies

TACTICS (French and Spanish acronym standing for Collaborative Work and Learning in Science with Information and Communications Technologies) is an ongoing project aimed at investigating a distributed community of learning and practice in which information and communications technologies (ICT) take the role of collaborative tools to support social construction of knowledge. This community is composed of researchers, graduate students, and high-school teachers and their students, from six schools and four universities in Canada and Mexico. It set out in fall 2000 to develop a community around the general topic of integrating concepts in science school subjects. Once a “prototype” community is established, it can become a “terrain” where different aspects could be studied. Subsequently, researchers could gradually take a “back seat” allowing as well as ensuring the autonomy of the school members involved and, thereby, the viability of the learning community. The set up of the proposed “prototype” distributed science learning community was therefore an essential yet far from trivial first step. This paper discusses the process of setting up the community and the lessons learned.