A one-day workshop was held at Palomar College to prepare selected Earth Science students from La Costa Canyon High School to act as mentors for their classmates in the investigation of the "From Mountains to Monsoons" CD-ROM. This activity was the culmination of a one-year ninth-grade Earth Science curriculum. Students formally applied to participate in the workshop via an Internet web site. During the morning, instructors from the Palomar College Earth Sciences Department led students through a series of computer and laboratory activities designed to deepen their understanding of ocean processes and the methods used to investigate the oceans. Topics covered in these activities included plate tectonics, monsoon systems, surface currents, ocean sediments and sediment core interpretation. In the afternoon, students spent two hours exploring the "From Mountains to Monsoons" CD-ROM.

Workshop participants returned to their classrooms and developed a lesson plan to mentor their classmates on the key principles covered in the "From Mountains to Monsoons" CD-ROM. Students replicated some of the lab activities, used digital images taken at the workshop, and set up microscopes to view the deep-sea sediment sample they prepared. Students also mentored their classmates in the computer lab and lead expert team discussions of each lab activity.

Students were required to answer three investigative questions concerning the formation of the Himalayan Mountains and their effect on climate. To accomplish this goal, each student became an expert in one of the five virtual activities. Using the jigsaw technique, expert teams were formed to complete the assignment. Team answers were compared to the summary of results in the ODP CD-ROM and each team then revised its original answers.