PARTICIPATION IN INTERNATIONAL VIRTUAL LEARNING COMMUNITIES - A Social Learning Perspective

Beverly Trayner, John D. Smith, Marco Bettoni

2006

Abstract

A promise of new web-based technologies is that they provide learning opportunities for people distributed across the globe but who can participate across time and space in the same virtual learning community. How do they do it? In this paper we report on some of the experiences of a virtual learning community which has members from twenty-five countries across different time-zones and who communicate in English. Through a communities of practice perspective we focus on the social nature of learning and describe some of the challenges and design issues raised in this community as it explores and develops practices for learning in an international online environment. While our focus is on social practices, and on developing an identity of participation in relation to those practices, we also make some wishes for web-based technologies that would better support these practices in an international virtual learning community.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Trayner B., D. Smith J. and Bettoni M. (2006). PARTICIPATION IN INTERNATIONAL VIRTUAL LEARNING COMMUNITIES - A Social Learning Perspective . In Proceedings of WEBIST 2006 - Second International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies - Volume 2: WEBIST, ISBN 978-972-8865-47-4, pages 229-236. DOI: 10.5220/0001257502290236

in Bibtex Style

@conference{webist06,
author={Beverly Trayner and John D. Smith and Marco Bettoni},
title={PARTICIPATION IN INTERNATIONAL VIRTUAL LEARNING COMMUNITIES - A Social Learning Perspective},
booktitle={Proceedings of WEBIST 2006 - Second International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies - Volume 2: WEBIST,},
year={2006},
pages={229-236},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0001257502290236},
isbn={978-972-8865-47-4},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF
JO - Proceedings of WEBIST 2006 - Second International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies - Volume 2: WEBIST,
TI - PARTICIPATION IN INTERNATIONAL VIRTUAL LEARNING COMMUNITIES - A Social Learning Perspective
SN - 978-972-8865-47-4
AU - Trayner B.
AU - D. Smith J.
AU - Bettoni M.
PY - 2006
SP - 229
EP - 236
DO - 10.5220/0001257502290236