The teaching and learning opportunities created by combining existing television programming with the kinds of interactivity offered by microcomputers have not been fully investigated by videodisc designers or science educators. The Videodisc Project Group, a subsection of Educational Technology Center's New Technologies Group, is: (1) conducting research on the educational effectiveness of videodiscs for teaching science; and (2) studying the process of videodisc creation by designing, producing, and evaluating an interactive videodisc. This document is designed to provide a status report on the research. The research videodisc, designed for use with middle school students, presents science subject matter in a manner that both illustrates and elicits the application of scientific modes of inquiry. It utilizes existing science television programs from the WGBH Educational Foundation and the Children's Television Workshop and will be produced using the authoring system Authority (TM), developed by Interactive Training Systems, Inc. The process of creating the research videodisc revealed design opportunities and constraints for retrofitting videodiscs. Because of the unchangeable nature of existing visuals, retrofitting is a difficult method for creating educational videodiscs in which content and instructional variety are important. (Author/CW)