A Virtual Research Environment for Social Science Students

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We are developing a prototype system for social science research methods instruction in a virtual laboratory environment. The lab is designed to address a number of common problems in teaching social science research methods to undergraduates: student motivation, access to learning and methods software, the integration of all stages of the research process into methods courses, and the limited variety of research experiences available. The virtual lab, which we call the Virtual Institute for Social Science Research (VISSR), is used by social science students as a distributive computing (client-server) application that provides integrated access to essential tutorials, basic data collection and analysis routines, and, perhaps more important, live interaction with others over networks and the Internet. Once developed, the client-server software bundle will be made available over the Internet, as well as from other media.