Designing for Virtual Communities in the Service of Learning

While many of us are concerned with the loss of communal spaces and ties that broaden one’s sense of self beyond the ‘me’ or ‘I’ and into the ‘we’ and ‘us’, less clear are the educational advantages of a community approach in terms of learning curricular content. The chapters in this volume explore the theoretical, design, learning, and methodological questions with respect to designing for and researching web-based communities to support learning. The authors, coming from diverse academic backgrounds (computer science, information science, instructional systems technology, educational psychology, sociology, and anthropology), are frank in examining what we do and do not know about the processes and practices of designing communities to support learning. Taken as a collection, these manuscripts point to the challenges and complex tensions that emerge when designing for web-supported community, especially when the focal practice of the community is learning.