[Air-l] Desigining for Virtual COmmunities in the Service of Learning

[Barry Wellman]

Sasha Barab, the late Rob Kling, and James Gray have a new book
out on e-learning (broadly conceived).
Designing for Cirtual Communities in the Service of Learning. Cambridge U
Press, 2004 (pb as well as hb).

There's articles about communities of practice, learning-oriented chat
rooms, discourse analysis (Susan Herring), as well as analyses of more
formal e-learning situations. Nice links between the techno and the
social.

Emmanuel Koku and I have an article in it, "Scholarly Networks as Learning
Communities: The Case of TechNet". We use social network analysis,
including block model, to study social and scholarly relations and social
structure in a semi-visible college, interestingly enough of people who
study internet and society.

 Barry
 _____________________________________________________________________

  Barry Wellman         Professor of Sociology        NetLab Director
  wellman at chass.utoronto.ca  http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman

  Centre for Urban & Community Studies          University of Toronto
  455 Spadina Avenue    Toronto Canada M5S 2G8    fax:+1-416-978-7162
	     To network is to live; to live is to network
 _____________________________________________________________________