To give students an insider's view of representative democracy and help them understand their role as citizens, the Center on Congress is creating a new online learning environment, Virtual Congress.

Virtual Congress will function much like the real Congress, with committees, floor action, amendments, back-and-forth discussions, input from constituents, and random events that can influence the legislative agenda.

Students from across the country will hold the 535 House and Senate seats in Virtual Congress. They will introduce bills and work online with others to try to move their proposals through the various stages of the legislative process. Student-legislators will receive opinions and requests from every direction < including constituents, colleagues, and members of the press.

Students in Virtual Congress will learn the mechanics of the legislative process, and they also will learn that successful legislating requires listening to different opinions and working out acceptable compromises among multiple valid viewpoints.

To guide the Center in helping students meet the stated learning objectives, we are conferring with experts in social studies education to help us with curriculum integration plans, outreach to underserved populations, standards-based assessment methods, and formative evaluation.

Major collaborators with the Center on this project are online designers from the Indiana University Department of Telecommunications; video producers from WTIU; and education experts from the IU School of Education.

First-year design and prototype work is under way, and will be followed by two years of development work.