Netcourses and netseminars: Current practice and new designs

Netcourses—courses delivered primarily over digital networks—promise to provide learners with quality, low-cost learning opportunities anywhere and anytime. While having implications throughout education, adult professionals may be the first to make extensive use of netcourses. By increasing the quality and timeliness of teacher professional development while reducing its costs, netcourses could have a major impact on the quality of teaching. In order to understand the realities of this promise, we have reviewed in detail all netcourses for teachers in mathematics and science. As a result of this analysis, we have developed new designs for the effective use of this medium with mathematics and science teachers.