International collaborative learning on the World Wide Web

Although the Internet has been widely celebrated for its potential to contribute to geographic learning, few have experimented with it as a vehicle for long-distance interactive collaboration. This article reports on an international effort whereby teams of students in the United Kingdom, Ireland, and the United States worked solely via the World Wide Web on a joint project critically analyzing electronic representations of the Third World. It summarizes the project's design, problems, and principle results. It concludes that although Web-based interactive learning is feasible and may complement traditional pedagogic formats, it is an imperfect substitute for traditional face-to-face interaction that occurs in the classroom.