E-Learning online communities

Online Communities were initially regarded as social gatherings between people that shared
common interests, communicating over a network primarily to exchange information and
engage in informal communication. The technological evolution of the past two decades
leading to the creation of the World Wide Web and the proliferation of the Internet was the
primary factor for Online Communities to transform from a social interaction medium to
virtual environments with commercial value. This transformation was accompanied by several
changes regarding community membership, user activities and behavioural patterns.
Significant research has focused on providing principles for community building, identifying
success criteria for established communities and understanding sociability, functionality
and usability issues.
The increased popularity of Online Communities triggered the diversification of the community
building process depending on those aspects forming the core of a community and enticing
Internet users to become members; hence the birth of online communities focusing on
games, health, commercial transactions, travel and education. The first communities for
education emerged in the mid-80s and since then they evolved to online meeting places for
people involved in remote, distance or e-Learning. Members of e-Learning Online
Communities frequently express additional requirements, since they rely on computermediated
communication for acquiring knowledge and engaging on educational activities.
Currently several institutions have created e-Learning Online Communities and there is
early evidence of their future success.
The aim of this workshop was to attract contributions from educators and researchers that
have participated in the investigation, development and evaluation of e-Learning Online
Communities. A truly international gathering, the e-Learning Online Communities workshop
has a programme committee with 48 members from 19 countries, representing a variety of
universities, institutions and centres from several disciplines. The 20 accepted submissions
of the workshop (14 papers and 6 extended abstracts) present ideas and views from 38
contributors, bringing the number of different countries represented to 22. Last but not
least, the two keynote speakers provide insights for both European and American views of
e-Learning Online Communities.