Building Virtual Communities

• Preface K. Ann Renninger and Wesley Shumar; Foreword: virtual communities for learning and development: a look to the past and some glimpses into the future Michael Cole; Introduction: on conceptualizing community Wesley Shumar and K. Ann Renninger; Part I. Types of Community: 1. The mystery of the death of Mediamoo: seven years of evolution of an online community Amy Bruckman and Carlos Jensen; 2. Female voices in virtual reality: drawing young girls into an on-line world Ann Locke Davidson and Janet Ward Shofield; 3. Community building with and for teachers at the math forum K. Ann Renninger and Wesley Shumar; 4. Learning in the virtual community depends upon changes in local communities Beverly Hunter; Part II. Structure and Community: 5. Evolution of an on-line education community of practice Mark S. Schlager, Judith Fusco and Patricia Schank; 6. Building social networks via computer networks: creating and sustaining distributed learning communities Caroline Haythornthwaite; 7. Mask and identity: the hermeneutics of self construction in the information age Dorian Wiszniewski and Richard Coyne; 8. WISE learning communities: design considerations Alex J. Cuthbert, Douglas B. Clark and Marcia C. Linn; Part III. Possibilities for Community: 9. Reflexive modernization and the emergence of wired self-help Roger Burrows and Sarah Nettleton; 10. Understanding the lifecycles of network-based learning communities James Levin and Raoul Cervantes; 11. Learning in cyberspace: an educational view of virtual community D. Jason Nolan and Joel Weiss; 12. Finding the ties that bind: tools in support of a knowledge-building community Christopher M. Hoadley and Roy D. Pea; Afterword: building our knowledge of virtual community: some responses David Hakken; Afterword: building, buying, or being there: imagining online community Steven G. Jones.

'… this volume provides an important initial grounding to a topic of much interest to educators, designers, sociologists, anthropologists, and even past, present, and future community members.' Convergence 2003