Some Perspectives on Establishing Online Learning Communitie

Adoptions of computer managed learning environments continue to increase, both inside the formal educational domain and in the commercial training environment. The perceived business case and its seductive message of greater efficiency are persuading senior figures in educational establishments to adopt the web as a delivery mechanism. The essentially hierarchical nature of educational management means that key decisions, which have major implications for student and academic staff alike, are imposed often without adequate stakeholder representation. This paper published in 2001 looked at the rapid advance of educational theory from a College Instructional paradigm (Barr, 1994) to the Learning Paradigm and the early work of Laurillard (1993) on effective use of Educational Technology. It looked at models of online course design concerned with building and running effective learning communities Hart (2000), and looked at work by Salmon (2000), Heppell & Ramondt (1998) in the UK, and by Kim (2000) in the US. It reported on the lessons of Talking Heads, a private, interactive community area of NCSL Online, which has several thousand active members, all of whom are head teachers. It reported on experience with students accessing from a commercial environment. (Please note that the conversion, by others, of this file to a PDF has truncated some of the text in the diagram, which was originally dynamic.)

The link address is: http://booboo.webct.com/2001/papers/Hart.pdf