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With increasing trend toward lifelong learning, online learning communities have become important places for people to seek and share knowledge. Yet with the increasing number of members and produced artifacts within the learning communities, it is challenging to find the related documents and influential experts who post topic-specific high-quality content. In the context of Web2.0, Web documents, e.g., blogs or forum messages, are freely discussed and commented by users. The users-generated content (e.g., comments) and activities (e.g., forward) implicitly reflect the importance of Web documents. Therefore, the social context, integrating the document content information and the social event information, are analyzed in this chapter to discover expertise in online learning communities. In addition to computing documents’ topic-focus degree, the proposed approach measures the quality of documents according to users’ feedback behaviors, review sentiment, and topic-specific influence of users who give feedback. Experiments on real dataset have shown that our approach is effective to find the meaningful topic-specific expertise. In online learning communities, this approach could be used to identify and recommend experts with high expertise and influence to make community interconnected and cohesive.

This study investigated how a Community Language Learning (CLL) approach, when utilised via new technology with the social network Facebook, can be most effective in a flipped EFL classroom. Curran [2] claims his CLL approach can reduce learner anxiety and insecurity. One feature of CLL is that trusting relationships are established not only between students and teachers but also among students themselves, and a learning community based on trusting relationships is claimed as the key element for the successful learning of foreign languages. Meanwhile, computer and mobile technologies have grown increasingly influential in many areas, including education. Flipped learning, a learning model first proposed by Sams and Bergmann [11], is becoming widespread globally, and mobile technology makes flipped classrooms both feasible and moveable. Liao and Fu’s study [14] showed that task rehearsal in computer-mediated communication does enhance learners’ performances. Thus, this study focused on learner anxiety and language performance issues.

Recently, Alternative Agrifood Networks (AAFNs) are emerged in many countries in order to overcome limits of mainstream capital-intensive agribusiness system. Producers and consumers are brought together in different organizational forms depending on socio-economic characteristics of the reference territories. In this paper we introduce an original model to classify current worldwide AAFNs under a knowledge and learning perspective. Different organizational forms are mapped along two main dimensions: relationship types among networked groups of actors and their level of interaction/collaboration.

This chapter draws on trends, research, and experience in organizations broadly conceived to examine schools as learning communities, with emphasis on workplace-based and field-based learning. While the ultimate beneficiaries of such learning are students of all ages, we take the position that students cannot learn unless teachers, leaders and other adults in schools are able to learn and share knowledge as learning communities. We use lenses we have developed over time on informal and incidental learning (Marsick and Watkins 1990; Marsick et al. 2009) and the learning organization (Watkins and Marsick 1993, 1996; Marsick and Watkins 1999) to consider workplace-based and field-based learning, facilitated by technology, in schools conceptualized as learning communities.

In this paper, we focus on creation of 3D content in learning communities, exemplified with a Virtual Gallery and Virtual Research Arena projects in the virtual campus of our university in Second Life. Based on our experiences, we discuss the possibilities and challenges of creating a repository of community memory in 3D virtual worlds.

University lecturers are usually experts within a specific context domain of knowledge, however they are seldom expert teachers or educational technology wizards. Facilitating professional development for lecturers to engage with innovation in teaching and learning utilizing new technologies is no simple process. However, we have found that structuring lecturer professional development around a sustained community of practice can result in a journey of conceptual and pedagogical transformation [1]. The increasing ubiquity of mobile devices and social media provides a platform for enabling pedagogical change. Thus we established a MOBile Community Of Practice MOBCOP of lecturers interested in researching the potential of mobile social media in education interested in exploring the concept of the pedagogy-andragogy-heutagogy continuum [2], and how mobile learning can be utilized as a catalyst [3] to move towards student-directed heutagogy. We argue that the MOPCOP framework is potentially applicable to a variety of higher education contexts.

This research study aims at exploring what roles different activities practiced in cultural exchanges can play in an educational setting and what future trends in cultural exchanges are. Qualitative data were collected from the Educational Resources Information Center database and were analyzed based on the theoretical framework of grounded theory and text data mining. Findings of the study showed that cultural exchanges can play the roles as catalyst of language learning, mediator of different linguistic and cultural groups, developer of learning communities, provider of authentic information, peace maker, and creator of multiple learning. On the other hand, the author envisioned and predicted the future of cross-cultural exchanges as an environment of multiple learning, a learning community with various modes of communication, participants with multiple language proficiency, and collaboration between/among students from different cultures. Hopefully, the research findings can provide language teachers who are conducting cultural exchanges with a way of thinking as to how a cross-cultural activity can be developed to satisfy students' needs and how a creative cross-cultural activity can be designed to ensure that students can gain the most benefits from it.

The web is nowadays one of the main information sources and information searching is one important issue where many advances have been reported. However, in learning environments, web searches do not consider the learning context in order to provide more adequate learning content. As collaborative learning platforms are usually web-based systems, it would be important to add a contextual web query tool to provide additional learning material from the web. This paper describes a strategy for incorporating such functionality in online social networks, as they can be used as collaborative learning platforms. In this study, the learning environment was a learning community in an online social network, in which a course was implemented. Contextual search was provided through a prototype that implements the proposed query expansion, which was evaluated using learning documents. Some results are summarized and presented.

A number of recommender systems RS have been or are being developed in the context of technology enhanced learning TEL. However, there seems to be a lack of research focusing on the dual system of vocational education and training VET. The knowledge transfer and sharing in a dual system has its own particularities and difficulties because of its inborn nature. Firstly, in the dual system, apprentices in-company practice training is at the workplace and their theoretical education is in the classroom in a vocational school. The transfer of know-how takes place in two different geo-location. Secondly, different stakeholders are involved in the dual system in the sense of knowledge transfer and sharing. We consider three roles for analyzing the knowledge transfer and sharing, i.e. trainee, trainer and teacher. This suggests, six flows of knowledge transfer and sharing may occur, i.e. flow: teacher i¾? trainee, trainer i¾? trainee, teacher i¾? trainer, trainee i¾? trainee, trainer i¾? trainer, teacher i¾? teacher. Knowledge transfer and sharing among trainee, teacher and trainer is not easy, if there is no fitting instrument to support this process. The project expertAzubi addresses these issues to develop an online teaching and learning community using Web 2.0 technologies. We propose a hybrid multi-recommender approach to 1 support knowledge transfer and sharing among trainees, teachers and trainers in a pro-active way, and 2 use particularly the user generated contents to generate personalized recommendations to motivate learners to initialize an active lifelong learning.

Social software, particularly Wiki, is providing new opportunities for computer-based collaborative learning by supporting more flexible sharing, communication, co-writing, collaborative knowledge building and learning community building. This paper presents a case study on how to scaffold wiki-based collaborative knowledge building in a tertiary education environment, which is expected to be a useful exploration of pedagogy with wikis. The paper proposes a theoretical scaffolding framework for wiki-based collaborative knowledge building, in which cognitive process, motivation and skills are concerned as the backbone of scaffolding design. Then, implementation results of this framework in a bachelor degree course are reported in the paper. Results of the implementation were positive. As predicted, both participation rate and quality of social construction were improved. The paper concludes with a discussion and reflection on issues relevant to implementation of scaffolding framework, including designing scaffolding strategies, the role of instructors, improvement of wiki systems and further researches.

As collaborative peer networks based upon a shared area of inquiry, communities of practice are voluntary and focused both on learning and on building capacity. They are engaged in sharing knowledge, developing expertise, and solving problems. Communities of practice break down communication barriers through continuous exchange of data, information, and knowledge in a more open and informal manner, typically among those with clinical and research expertise. Recent debates have centered on increasing public understanding of science through citizen participation in the production of scientific knowledge, and the assessment of its applications in biotechnology. To sustain a “knowledge commons,” communities of practice can work toward diminishing the boundaries between the “expert” producers of research within the academic, public, nonprofit, and private sectors, and consumers across these sectors. Translating research into action promotes better decision-making by health care providers and their “active” patients, so that both may meaningfully engage in informed dialogues about the nature and quality of care. Collaborative methods, such as community-based participatory research, citizen science, learning communities, and lay health worker participation, will insure a more socially responsive transfer of comparative effectiveness research findings across diverse sectors and constituencies.

With the rapid development of computer technology and network technology, the distance education has been a new height step by step. But the problem in distance teaching has become increasingly obvious. Athymia is an urgent problem in Virtual Environment. This paper analyses the influence factors and gives the Resolution Strategy from the teaching theory, Instructional Design, Learning Community and affective computing.

Content reuse is one of the major concerns in the Technology Enhanced Learning community. ErauzOnt is a system that uses Natural Language Processing techniques, heuristic reasoning, and ontologies to generate Learning Objects from textbooks. It has been tested with several textbooks written in the Basque language in order to evaluate the automatic construction of Learning Objects.

In this paper we describe a proposal for defining the relationships between resources, users and services in a digital repository. Nowadays, virtual learning environments are widely used but digital repositories are not fully integrated yet into the learning process. Our final goal is to provide final users with recommendation systems and reputation schemes that help them to build a true learning community around the institutional repository, taking into account their educational context (i.e. the courses they are enrolled into) and their activity (i.e. system usage by their classmates and teachers). In order to do so, we extend the basic resource concept in a traditional digital repository by adding all the educational context and other elements from end-users’ profiles, thus bridging users, resources and services, and shifting from a library-centered paradigm to a learning-centered one.

Tapping into the wealth of knowledge which the Jesuits have in education, we seek to explore the wisdom embedded in their traditions with a vision to enrich the ‘21st Century Learning' with ‘high-impact education practices' for the good of students, teachers, parents, educators and societies in Greater China. Specifically, the first part of this paper is to introduce the nature of experiential education and a practical model of experiential learning through which Loyola University Chicago has successfully brought Jesuit mission of "expanding knowledge in service of humanity through learning, justice, and faith" to live and to fruition. The second part presents the context and preliminary findings of the ‘Experiential Learning and Education Campaign' and the launching of the Center for Experiential Learning and Assessment (CELA) for cultivating effective learning communities and for guiding their evolution in Hong Kong. Building on the Loyola's experience, CELA engages younger students with opportunities to be responsible, and through responsibility, to fuel continuous improvement according to what they are capable of. Making the best use of ICT and other social networking tools, CELA also serves as an important platform for sustaining the momentum through contacts and for maximizing every transformative learning opportunity to its full impact potential. The significance of this article is to inspire, to discuss and to stimulate reflections among academia on experiential education towards knowledge transfer and development.

Knowledge building is a meaning making process with social negotiation and dialog. In the new environment adapting to the group learning context supported by synergistic learning toolkits, this study explores the community structure, social relation and participation character in classroom knowledge building by Social network analysis. This results show that there come into being a social relation network with knowledge convergence under the learner knowledge building led by teachers, which make views and ideas of learners assembling to support knowledge building, at the same time this paper also describes the participant character in learning community. This study can provide a new way to learning technology innovation in different culture context.

Discussion is usually considered a powerful tool for the development of pedagogical skills such as critical thinking, collaboration and reflection. In the last few years, an online asynchronous discussion forum has become an integral part of teaching and learning in tertiary education. However, there are considerable challenges involved in designing discussion forum for learning and teaching arrangements that can support desired learning outcomes. The study analysed the factors that affect the level of the student participation in the online discussion forums with emphases on some of the critical issues that should be taken into account when designing online discussions forums that can support desired learning outcomes. We show that the course instructor roles and level of participations in the discussion forum particularly determines the overall level of discussion among the learning communities.

Setting up a digital, intelligentized and networking platform based on modern information technology is of great importance and will be beneficial to the building of learning community in which abounds in information and the students are available to the information and will be cultivated into creative talents. After the detail analysis of the technical characteristics and developing tendency of educational informationization, this paper puts forward some suggestions on the problems of the informationization construction.

In the context of the information system in health sciences, the actor requires collaborative models for analysis and diagnoses process. In this purpose, we developed a learning community based on a distributed management model, the model is supported in grid development to facilitate the process of management, storage, distribution and selection of knowledge for perform process analysis, specifically in movement sciences, this project research analyzes the problems associated to learning the principles of human movement diagnoses. The study of the parameters required for the preparation of diagnostics, are presented to students to apply them in collaborative work sessions.

The omnipresence of the Internet and high bandwidth connections has brought about the development of powerful software packages called learning management systems (LMS). An LMS integrates the administration and facilitation of online activities and the distribution of learning materials. In this chapter, it is argued that the use of LMS is limited to only a few technological features and that so far it has failed to promote meaningful learning environments. Therefore, two empirical studies were conducted to investigate these concerns. The first study reports the development of a practicable taxonomy for LMS features. The second study extends the taxonomy for discussion forums. This chapter concludes with future perspectives on the application and extension of the introduced practicable taxonomy for LMS.

CROKODIL is a platform for the support of collaborative resource-based learning with Web resources. It enables the building of learning communities in which learners annotate their relevant resources using tags. In this paper, we propose the use of automatically generated large-scale taxonomies in different languages to cope with two challenges in CROKODIL: The multilingualism of the resources, i.e. web resources are in different languages and the connectivity of the semantic network, i.e. learners do not tag resources on the same topic with identical tags. More specifically, we describe a set of features that can be used for detecting hyponymy relations from the category system of Wikipedia.

Take up of Web 2.0 applications in formal Education and Training is still in an experimental phase and scientific evidence on Learning 2.0 practices in schools and universities is scarce. To gather more insights on the current use and potential impact of Learning 2.0, IPTS conducted an exploratory study on the use of social media applications in formal Education and Training to enhance learning activities and promote innovation and inclusion. The study employed a triangulation of research methodologies, drawing on a literature review, a collection of 250 cases, 16 in-depth case studies and an expert workshop. This article presents and discusses the main findings of this study. The evidence gathered suggests, among others, that Learning 2.0 approaches require and facilitate technological, pedagogical and organisational innovation and can thus contribute to the modernisation of European Education and Training institutions deemed necessary for facing the challenges of the 21st century.

Although IT has been very successful in enabling distributed, collaborative learning and knowledge creation in open-source communities, its promise in other contexts is still an open question. In this paper, we describe the deployment of a video-based Web2.0 platform in an executive education context. The platform, which we developed, makes extensive use of video, profiling, game dynamics, agents and network visualizations in order to capture the attention and involvement of the learning community members. Our goal was to provide executive education participants with an attractive, interactive platform for extending their learning and networking beyond the classroom. This experience has allowed us to identify three main barriers to Web2.0 inter-organizational learning and collaboration in executive education: technological barriers, motivational barriers and the inter-organizational aspect itself.

This demonstration will present a novel community environment ‘AWESOME Dissertation Environment (ADE)' which uses semantic wikis to implement the pedagogical approach of ‘social scaffolding' ADE was developed within an interdisciplinary UK research project called AWESOME (Academic Writing Empowered by Social Online Mediated Environments) which involved the universities of Leeds, Coventry and Bangor The environment was instantiated in several domains: Education, Fashion and Design, Philosophy and Religious Studies, and an Academic Writing Centre Following both the encouraging feedback from the trial instantiations and the challenges faced in deploying the environment in practice, we conducted a second stage of the project which aimed at adapting the ADE to dissertation writing in computing Following the lessons learnt from the first stage, we now performed a systematic approach to tailor the existing community environment to meet dissertation writing needs in a specific domain and in a particular educational practice.

Knowledge Societies also named Social Learning Networks (SLN) allow interaction and collaboration between individuals (instructors and students), who share their connections under a scheme of learning communities around common learning interest. In this paper, we present Zamna, a Knowledge Society implemented as an adaptive learning social network. A community of Instructors and Learners can create, display, share and assess communities, intelligent tutoring systems or adaptive courses in a collaborative environment. The communities and courses are tailored to the student's learning style according to the learning style model of Felder-Silverman. The identification of community's and student's learning style is performed using self-organizing maps. The main contribution of this paper lies at the integration of Artificial Intelligence with SLN.

The paper describes the development of a new service within the collaboration platform “Online Communities”, entirely designed and implemented by our working group at the University of Trento. The system is able to track the activities performed by each participant of a learning community. The service, called “workbook”, represents the first of a series of innovations that we will introduce in the system to improve the collaboration level between its participants. The metaphor of virtual communities, in fact, allows us to develop and expand the services’ scenarios. Even the workbook service itself benefits of this community approach.

The paper aims at presenting and analyzing the implementation of a Participatory Design Methodology within the large multidisciplinary European Project PALETTE. This methodology successfully enabled and supported the development and implementation of a "palette" of interoperable services dedicated to Communities of Practice in order to manage their knowledge asset, support collaboration, communication and decision making, and help to better animate the community life. Finally, it presents some lessons learnt that could be of interest for other multidisciplinary project in the Technology Enhanced Learning community.

The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-02556-3_42, Procceedings of Symposium on Human Interface 2009, Held as Part of HCI International 2009, San Diego, CA, USA, July 19-24, 2009, Part I, It is well known that members of work groups need awareness about one another, about shared elements, and about the group process. We present a generic framework of awareness services for groupware systems. The proposed approach has been tested through the implementation of a prototype composed by several awareness services for the Knowledge Management system called KnowCat. KnowCat is a groupware that supports the collaborative construction of quality community knowledge. We carried out a research study with a group of students enrolled in a graduate course at Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (Spain) to test our approach. The study outcomes corroborated that providing to the KnowCat users the most useful information about how the classmates have interacted with the system through the awareness services, can help them to know how they should solve their own work in the system and to be aware that they are working in a collaborative way., This research was partly funded by the Spanish National Plan of R+D, project number,TIN2008-02081/TIN; and by the AECI (Spanish Agency for the International Cooperation) project number A/017436/08.

One of the objectives of this paper is to verify whether it is possible to extract meaningful related tags from a limited set of tagged resources and from resources tagged by only few users. This is the expected situation in a learning community. An additional goal is to assess whether the related tags extracted can be a useful source for enriching an existing domain ontology. A user centered evaluation has been carried out to analyze the effect of the enriched ontology in supporting a learning task in comparison with clusters of related tags. The experiment has been carried out both with beginners and advanced learners.

Classical Chinese Poetry (CCP) is a valuable but almost locked treasure chest of human wisdom and civilization since 2000 years. With the advent of the Web 2.0 a renaissance of CCP is possible even outside Chinese-speaking communities world-wide. With mobile technologies and educational games we can address new learning communities for CCP and open the chest again. In this paper, we introduce a Web 2.0 personal learning environment for CCP. We have developed a generic and interoperable data model for CCP we utilize not only for mobile learning scenarios but also for educational gaming with different levels of difficulty. Learners are empowered to learn Chinese poetry, language, history, and culture. This research work shows how modern information technologies assist users to diffuse knowledge across the borderlines of communities and societies.