ONLINE EDUCATION AND ONLINE LEARNING COMMUNITIES — SOME REFLECTIONS

Tor Söderström
Department of Education
Umeå University
Sweden

The paper examines online education and online learning communities. Does online learning necessarily support student interaction, the sharing of ideas and the creation of a community? It is based on an analysis from two cases, folkbildning and special needs, of online higher education in Sweden. The analysis suggests that the special needs case shows more evidence of an online learning community but also a stronger pedagogical steering. The participation and sharing opportunities among the students in these courses differed and communication technology learning systems may provide opportunities for conversation and community formation when pedagogical steering is applied. Adoption of the label “online learning community” for online education can be misleading. It may underwrite an ideal of online education, while masking the fact that practices often fail to honour such ideals. It may lead to educational regressive consequences as handbooks for teachers that simplify complex phenomena where the delivery of information takes priority over the exchange of meaning.

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