Distance Learning Applications Using Virtual Communities

Abstract

On many college and university campuses, the use of distance learning continues to grow with academic courses and programs that have all, or at least part, of an online component(s). Most colleges or universities have some form of Intranet where instructors can make course materials available online to their students and/or they may have an online location where students can converse with others on course-related topics. A review of the literature indicates that while the use of campus-based Intranets and the Internet on college and university campuses is widely discussed from a variety of theoretical and practical bases, the body of published knowledge on developing and implementing virtual communities is less robust. However, numerous papers on this topic do exist and their findings indicate that the use of a virtual community can be essential in today’s distance learning environment.