Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
This volume brings together a series of chapters focused on the theoretical, design, learning, and methodological questions with respect to designing for and researching virtual communities to support learning. We are at an interesting time in education and technology, with terms such as communities of learners, discourse communities, learning communities, knowledge-building communities, school communities, and communities of practice being the zeitgeists of education and the Internet serving as a much touted medium to support their emergence. More generally, any time a new technology is introduced, it suggests the promise of the revolution of education. Thomas Edison was convinced that film would transform education and make the teacher obsolete. Although the Internet offers much promise and the potential to support new environments for learning, we are just beginning to understand the educational potential of community models for learning and whether community can be designed online or face-to-face. In fact, we know very little about whether something such as community can be designed and, if so, whether this can be done online. We are witnessing instructional designers employing usability strategies effective for understanding human-computer interactions, but we have little appreciation of how to design to facilitate sociability – that is, supporting human–human interactions as mediated by technology.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.