Virtual Learning Communities in Higher Education

Abstract

This chapter will examine the virtual classroom as a social constructivist educational space and identify whether and how a virtual ‘learning community’ emerges in different telecollaborative environments. A qualitative analysis of e-mails, field notes of in-class discussions, as well as a subsequent survey with open-ended questions have shown that virtual learning communities do materialize when certain preconditions are met, such as embedding virtual elements into face-to-face learning environments, sufficient monitoring by staff and the design of suitable learning environments that bring about multiple perspectives with the help of stimulating prompts and adequate tasks. For intercultural virtual learning communities, an important feature of foreign language instruction at higher education level, several success factors were identified, including a genuine interest in and commitment to the task and collaborators at hand, the willingness to engage in a discourse structure that resembles a real conversation and encourages the exchange of views, and most importantly, the full integration of mediated communication in local classrooms.