How Voluntary Online Learning Communities Emerge in Blended Courses

A comparative case study used content analysis to observe the emergence of voluntary online learning communities in two blended courses. The study developed an interaction-based approach to analyze such communities, and found interesting similarities and differences between the two classes. One similarity is the emergence of three categories of students in each class: Core, Active, and Peripheral. The distribution of students into these three categories was almost identical, and appears to be similar to the widely observed bibliographic distribution regularity known as Bradford’s Law.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2006
• Where: HICSS
• Authors: Robert Heckman, Qing Li, Xue Xiao
• Keywords: Bibliographic Distribution Regularity, Biometrics, Comparative Case Study, HICSS 2006, Online Learning Communities, System Sciences