Over the past several years I have become very interested in the creation, development, motivation and possibilities that online communities for learning offer.

I’ve written a number of posts and answered a lot of email about how to develop and sustain communities. Yet, no matter how interested people were in the topic, there was no one single resource that I could point people to that might help them.

So I decided to write one.

I’ve written what basically amounts to a single chapter, seventeen pages, that will hopefully help others who are interested in the concept of community development in education and learning. It has some basic information about choosing a platform for your community, stages of community development, possible roles and sustaining people’s interest in a community. I’m sure there’s an entire book here waiting for someone who wants to dig deeper into these topics, but I hope that this guide can be useful as a starting point for those working down these paths.

It is licensed as a Creative Commons piece, so feel free to use it as is, tear it apart, add to it, remix it, etc. to meet your needs.

I have uploaded it here as a pdf, as an epub, and as a Word document. Let me know if you have problems with any of these files.

Any suggestions for revision or feedback you might have about this piece is of course most welcome.

online communities (pdf)

online communities (Word)

online communities (epub)

Related posts:

Building Online Communities Resources List Culture and Online Communities Building Learning Communities – Step One: Have Some Fun! Building Learning Communities – Step Two: Generate Some Buzz