Elements of Quality Online Education cation

Engagement in Online Learning CommunitiesStudents in a class often have common interests, and, in higher education, are often seeking to become amember of a larger community. A starting point is that a learning community would have people with aset of common interests (often evidenced by the fact that they are taking a common course or program ofstudy) who participate and share their knowledge.Various disciplines have tried to define communities with a view toward doing research on them. Withthe advent of online communications, this effort has taken on new meaning, since there is no longer ageographic component to the definitions. For example, Cherny [12] reviews some of the definitions ofcommunity given by sociologists and anthropologists in her discussion of communities in MUDs (Multi-User Dungeons) noting, “There has been an astounding lack of consensus in the social science literatureabout just what is meant by the word ‘community’” [12]. Various definitions do find a little commonground in the notion of interactions among people, in the importance of communications, and in sharedlanguage properties, while others talk about common goals and cooperation and setting boundaries.Going beyond the basic dictionary definitions, some writers delineate important features of learningcommunities more specifically. Currently many educators seem to be looking to Wenger’s [13, 14] ideasabout “communities of practice” as a model for learning communities. In his initial book on communitiesof practice [13] Wenger lists three key elements: joint enterprise, shared repertoire, and mutualengagement. These, he says constitute the “practice” part of the community of practice and in doing soenable the community to cohere.In a more recent book, Wenger, McDermott, and Snyder maintain that communities of practice “aregroups of people who share a concern, a set of problems, or a passion about a topic, and who deepen theirknowledge and expertise in this area by interacting on an ongoing basis” [14]. According to these authors,communities of practice share a structure that is a domain of knowledge to define the issues, a communityof people who care about the domain, and the shared practice within the domain that they are developingtogether. The community portion of this formulation refers to the social aspects of the group: “It is agroup of people who interact, learn together, build relationships, and in the process develop a sense ofbelonging and mutual commitment.” [14]. It is important to recognize that members no longer have to belocated in the same place for a community to develop. It is also clear that these communities of practiceare learning communities, as well, since learning is a key part of the definition for Wenger. Therelationship between these communities in organizations and learning communities that may (or may not)come together in a classroom or online for a semester is not clear. Does the time-limited nature of sucheducational communities change their character in significant ways? Or is an implication that the idea ofcommunities of practice should be to restructure education to take advantage of the deeper and longertermnature of this kind of community?Ormrod [8] identifies key concepts when she lists the following as features of learning communities ineducational settings:• All students are active participants• Discussion and collaboration are common and key• Diversity in student interests and progress is expected and respected• Students and teachers coordinate in helping one another learn; no one has exclusiveresponsibility for teaching others• Everyone is potential resource for others; different individuals serve as resources for differenttopics and tasks60