Practical Strategies for Community-BuildingOne of the great merits of this text is its balance of foundational pedagogical theory and practical strategies for online community building.
Building Learning Communities in Cyberspace offers guidance for
evaluating community-oriented learning as well as for composing syllabi and fostering collaborative learning.
While the book has no associated Web site, we appreciated the apparatus for course development, most of which is found in the appendix. Resource A offers syllabus samples for courses in
management and organizational theory, quantitative methods in business, business administration,
behavior in organizations, and treatment and recovery in chemical dependency. You need not teach in these areas to benefit from seeing the syllabi, however. Some of the syllabi help clarify how online learning may be effectively paired with face-to-face meetings. Others indicate the weight given to online postings, which tend to constitute the reflective component of the sample courses.
The resource section at the end of the text also includes a glossary and lists of Web resources. The glossary may prove critical to helping teachers new to online education navigate the dense and changing jargon of the field, while the Web resources again strike a balance between the theoretical (electronic journals) and the practical (courseware and other course resources).
Finally, chapters seven through ten include lists of questions intended to spark discussions about central course concerns. For example, in the chapter that addresses "Promoting Collaborative Learning," a series of questions are offered for
instructors and for
students to facilitate reflection on the nature and significance of collaboration in a particular course.