BUILDING A VIRTUAL COMMUNITY FOR ALN
Yi Zhang, Razvan Stefan Bot, Starr Roxanne Hiltz · Journal of the Association for Information Systems · 2001
The growth of the Internet and global access to it has greatly changed our society.People not only think of working anytime, any place; they also think of learning anytime, anywhere without going to a physical campus.Asynchronous Learning online has now become a very hot research topic; researchers all over the world are trying to find effective methods for online courses.How can all the researchers in this area collaborate with each other, and become more efficient in their research?This paper introduces an ongoing research projec, which is aimed at building a virtual community for Asynchronous Learning Network (ALN) researchers.The system -WebCenter for ALN research-is designed to serve as both a knowledge base and a collaborative place for the community.Members can read the latest papers in the field and discuss their research problems with other members.They can get information about ALN from the knowledge base, and also contribute to the community with new information.