I believe this branch warrants special consideration, to distinguish it from the general concept of learning above. In this link, I will try to articulate my own ideas, as well as what I find in the media and the Web.
These are some resources on the web suggested by George E. Marsh II, for Building Online Communities in Web Based Courses:
9 Timeless Design Principles for Community-Building
To read Roderick C. Sims paper, From Art to Alchemy:
Achieving Success With Online Learning, click on:
http://it.coe.uga.edu/itforum/paper55/paper55.htm
To read John Seely Brown's 'Learning, Working & Playing in the Digital Age' click below:
http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/sci_edu/seelybrown/
Students’ Distress with a
Web-based Distance Education Course, is an article that presents a qualitative case study of a web-based distance education course at a major U.S. university. Click on:
http://www.slis.indiana.edu/CSI/Wp/wp00-01B.html
Building an Internet Culture - Phil Agre
Building Collaborative Online Communities for K-12 - Jason Ravitz
Building Online Communities: Transforming Assumptions Into Success - Benton Foundation
CommunityStart.com - A number of community-related software vendors and service providers have published "white papers" illustrating their research and beliefs about online communities. Taken
together, they can make a quite educational (and free) introduction to some of the ideas related to building communities on the Internet.
Design Principles for Online Communities - Peter Kollock
Online Community Builder's Tool-Kit - This Tool-Kit for building Online Communities was first presented at the Next Five Minutes Tactical Media Conference in Amsterdam, 12-14 March '99. It was developed
by Robin Hamman.
Online Communities - Textbook by Wiley
Principles of Building Online Communities
Review of Building Learning Communities in Cyberspace - (Book review)