Volume Two - Academic Conferences

A Framework for Understanding Online Learning
Communities
Sónia Sousa 1 , David Ribeiro Lamas 1 , José Braga de Vasconcelos 2 and Ilya
Shmorgun 1
1
Institute of Informatics, Tallinn University, Estonia
2
Faculdade de Ciência e Tecnologia, Universidade Fernando Pessoa, Porto,
Portugal
sonia.sousa@tlu.ee
david.lamas@tlu.ee
jvasco@ufp.edu.pt
ilya.shmorgun@gmail.com
Abstract: This paper attempts to provide a deeply understand of how a community are developed in an online
learning context. This research was developed as a part of a broader research purpose that aims to deeper
understand how does trust relate to the activity patterns of the online learning contexts. Results gather there from
supported a survey design on relate trust with online activity patterns as well supported the development and
implementation of an ontology that aims to facilitate a systematic recording of online learning community
manifestations as an effort to understand their life cycle. The relevance of this paper is grounded in the changes
that are taking place in today learning and teaching contexts. Among other relevant aspects a key features of this
conceptualization – on “what are online learning communities” – is to provide a broader perspective and
understand on possible potential effects that those changes can have in our daily relationships, in the way we
seek and acquire information, or even in the way we teach and learn.
Keywords: online learning communities, concept maps, community development
1. Introduction
Our social relations with the online media in general or to any technological medium ever since
enabled the connection of people with corresponding interests, regardless time or space restrictions
and always allowed alternative forms of communication for people who already know each other
primarily in real life, also served as support to a variety of social and professional goals, set a ground
for flourishing social networking and collaboration. That is why community is quite possibly the most
over-used word in the Net industry nowadays, community is the ability to connect with people who
have similar interest, it may well be the key to the digital world, but the term has been diluted and
debased to describe even the most tenuous connections, the minimal interaction. More, as the
Internet has afforded a proliferation of community building tools and organizations, communities
assumed the participation factor for granted, leading some online community initiatives to emptiness
and dissent. What points to the fact that although firmly routed into Internet’s tradition, online
communities are inherently fragile which leads to the necessity of understanding what fosters the
success of an online communities. This is especially within a teaching and learning community
environment, where learning continuous to be an essential social process, despite the tendency of
some of us to shut ourselves away and sit in Rodinesque isolation. The success of the learning
outcomes depends strongly on the online learning environment’s ability to support a sense of
community. On the other hand, it is now a widely belief that communities, societies and culture as a
whole are tailored by the diversity of individuals, who contribute to the intellectual climate and
technological infrastructure of society, rather than the effects of media itself.
2. Fundamental notions of building community-learning environments
The development of communities has been an aspect of the Internet since it beginning, and it has
ever since enabled the connection of people with corresponding interests, regardless of time and
space restrictions. And, in spite of in the beginning the Internet was know or seen as a mere
repository of information and data where online community members does not necessarily implied a
strong bond among the community, that has changed with the increased availability of user-generated
content mechanisms and with the growth of social networking services. The Internet become the hub
of socialization; become the logical extension of our human tendencies toward togetherness, that
have been tailored our society and our cultures. Those reflected tendencies towards an individualcentered
approach whereas group-centered activities, creating context where each individual
contributes to the intellectual climate and technological infrastructure of society, rather than the effects
1000