Reflective summary 1

Reflective Summary 1
A community is a “multigenerational group of people at work or play, whose identities are defined in large part by the role they play and relationships they share in that group or activity”. (Riel & Polin, 2004, p. 18) A community is a group of people who share the same hobbies or common interests. Within that community, each person has their own role. They must conform to the rules and regulations of the community in order to remain an active member. Individuals can choose to join or remove themselves from a community at any time. The success of a community depends greatly on the level of participation of the various members over time.
A virtual community is “a social group in which learning is an intentional, explicit goal”. (Riel & Polin, 2004, p. 17) A virtual community is one that is formed in an online environment. The environment can be a social network or be an educational network. Members of this group can join for a variety of reasons from trying to find a future mate to wanting to learn about a certain subject. Virtual communities provide a safe environment for like minded individuals to communicate, share ideas, and interact with others with common goals or intentions.
The key characteristics of a virtual community are that they share a common goal. This goal is dependent on which type of environment you are a member of. If it is online dating, the goal is to find a mate. For educational environments, the goal is to learn the material. There are also rules that must be followed. Many virtual communities have terms of service which outline rules for the community. The terms of service often indicate membership requirements, rules of interaction, and how to report issues and problems. In general, rude language is not allowed in any community. Members must be courteous to each other. If members ever have issues with other members, they have the ability to report them.
To build a learning community, you must first have enough people interested in a subject to make it worthwhile. There must also be an “expert” or someone who knows enough about the subject in order to be a facilitator or instructor for that subject. Together, there should be enough people to make the interactions more than a conversation between two or three people. A learning community could provide a common place for individuals to go as a resource for information, communication with “experts” on a topic, or even to share ideas and get potential insight from other community members. This type of forum often leads to sharing of information and groups learning best practices or practical ways of accomplishing shared goals. A virtual learning community could be related to the learning process in many ways including sharing ideas, providing information to those who are less knowledgeable, developing common practices in the best interest of all involved.
There are many factors that influence the success or failure of an online learning community. Knowledge of the community would be a primary factor of whether or not a learning community is successful. Individuals who would be interested in an online learning community would need to know that it existed and how to access the learning community initially. Advertising is always a possible way to insure people know about a specific community or service. However, depending on the goals of the community and funding options, this may or may not be possible. Second, level of interest is important as well. Community members need to be interested and involved in the topic at hand. Without involvement of the members, the community is likely to have decreased traffic and eventually lack of activity in relation to the subject matter. This will ultimately lead to non-usage or failure of the community. We see this in the example of MediaMOO. (Bruckman & Jenson, 2002)
Some of the practical considerations for the context when designing and building a virtual learning community include financial issues, potential community members, how to reach the intended audiences, security issues, and maintenance of the community. Financial issues could range from cost of building/start up of the community, or whether or not a membership fee will be required, to website maintenance and administration fees. Security issues of a virtual community would depend on content and whether or not the community requires password access to requiring firewalls and other secure internet features to provide a safe environment for the learning community. Maintenance and oversight of the community will be required to some extent. At the very least, a webmaster to build and accommodate changes of the virtual community as determined by the members of the community would be necessary. Depending on the group, moderators to monitor discussion boards or facilitate interactions may be needed to get started.

References
Bruckman, A., & Jenson, C. (2002). The mystery of the death of mediamoo seven years of evolution of an online community. In K. A. Renninger & W. Shumar (Eds.), Building Virtual Communities (pp. 21-33). Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press.
Riel, M., & Polin, L. (2004). Online Learning communities Common ground and critical differences in designing technical environments. In S. A. Barab, R. Kling, & J. H. Gray (Eds.), Designing for virtual communities in the service of learning (pp. 16-50). Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press.