Most learning takes place in communities. People continually learn through their participation with others in everyday activities. Such learning is important in contemporary society because formal education cannot prepare people for a world that changes rapidly and continually. We need to live in learning communities.
This volume gathers together all of the scholarly materials directly emanating from a workshop held in August 2005, when a multidisciplinary group of scholars met at Penn State's College of Information Sciences and Technology to discuss 'learning in communities'. Initially, a sectioned report on the workshop was published as a special section in the Journal of Community Informatics in 2006. Subsequently, a special issue of 5 full papers was published in the Journal of Computer-Supported Cooperative Work, and a special section of 2 full papers was published in the International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning.
This volume gathers together all of the scholarly materials directly emanating from a workshop held in August 2005, when a multidisciplinary group of scholars met at Penn State's College of Information Sciences and Technology to discuss 'learning in communities'. Initially, a sectioned report on the workshop was published as a special section in the Journal of Community Informatics in 2006. Subsequently, a special issue of 5 full papers was published in the Journal of Computer-Supported Cooperative Work, and a special section of 2 full papers was published in the International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning.
From the reviews:
"Learning in communities is for people involved in lifelong learning in all its manifestations: knowledge management, distributed learning, cognitive apprenticeship, communities of practice, or any of the other terms used in this diverse field. It is a book of wide scope, bringing together many viewpoints. ... this book, in series of texts on human-computer interaction, is by academics for academics." (Alexa Campbell, Technical Communication, Vol. 56 (4), November, 2009)
"Learning in communities is for people involved in lifelong learning in all its manifestations: knowledge management, distributed learning, cognitive apprenticeship, communities of practice, or any of the other terms used in this diverse field. It is a book of wide scope, bringing together many viewpoints. ... this book, in series of texts on human-computer interaction, is by academics for academics." (Alexa Campbell, Technical Communication, Vol. 56 (4), November, 2009)