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Well-constructed social environments provide an excellent opportunity to model high tech learning in a safe online environment. In other words, experienced learners can share their experience with new learners.

"It's interestingly changing the way in which people are educated. You just need to ask intelligent questions, and you can get answers anytime, anywhere, in real time," Taylor said. "Education becomes no longer a fact-based learning process, it's search-based, cognitive. It's kind of like what happened to math skills with the calculator."

<p>The purpose of this project is to support a personally meaningful and educationally worthwhile learning experience. Central to the study introduced here is the <a href="http://communitiesofinquiry.com/sub/coi_model.html">model of a community of inquiry</a> that constitutes four elements essential to an educational experience: </p> <ul> <li><a href="http://communitiesofinquiry.com/sub/cognitive.html">Cognitive Presence</a></li> <li><a href="http://communitiesofinquiry.com/sub/social.html">Social Presence</a></li> <li><a href="http://communitiesofinquiry.com/sub/teaching.html">Teaching Presence</a></li> <li><a href="http://communitiesofinquiry.com/sub/methodology.html">Methodology</a></li></ul>

"There are a lot of terrible educational games out there, where you have to do something unfun, like solve five math problems, so you can do something fun, like play a game," said Ben Stokes, a games expert at the MacArthur Foundation.<br><br> Instead, the experts are interested in the educational benefits of commercially available games that were not expressly designed for school use--simulation games like Zoo Tycoon, in which elementary school-age children can build virtual zoos by selecting animals, creating appropriate habitats, managing food budgets and even setting the prices of popcorn at the concession stands.<br>