Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Electronic networks are being increasingly used to support a variety of educational activities. Although early research in this area has been promising, there has been less work to date concerning more basic cognitive and theoretical issues associated with the design and use of educational electronic networks. This paper proposes a distributed network learning framework (DNLF) which will be presented through three main aspects: (a) network mediators and the flow of information and knowledge, (b) networks and cognitive theories of learning, and (c) the network-human interface. A s an example of an application of the distributed network learning framework, an ongoing research and development project is discussed that involves a cognitively-based educational electronic communication tool. The Message Assistant. In addition to the standard electronic mail features such as creating, sending, and receiving messages, this program includes a user-defined incremental expert system and hypertextual linking functions to assist a network mediator in her or his evaluation, organization, and distribution of network information and knowledge. The distributed network learning framework can function as a flexible-and extendable—set of conceptual views from which to examine and to work with different aspects of dynamically evolving network learning environments.