The Community-Building Process Among Young Learners in a Virtual Collaborative Environment

During the upper elementary grades, students are faced with increasingly complex and decontextualized texts and content, making this a critical time of transition in which students begin to experience academic failures and disengage from school. Literature indicates that developing a strong sense of community among learners will help address the problem of disengagement and thus of declines in subsequent school achievement; however, community is largely overlooked in teaching practice. Technology has the potential to help in the development of community among learners of this age. This research implemented a design for three online learning communities, with varying degrees of face-to-face contact, in order to describe the process of community-building among the participants and to assess how well the design supported the theory that technology can help in the formation of learning communities.;Study findings suggest that face-to-face contact plays a significant role in solidifying a sense of community in online groups with upper elementary children. Furthermore, building and maintaining social ties with others in the group was a critical step in the process of students developing a group culture and becoming enculturated into the community that formed. The presence of a teacher-facilitator not only motivated student participation but also served as a model for students' increasing repertoire of questioning strategies and interaction types.;Significant conclusions reached through this study include that providing face-to-face contact makes a significant difference in building community only when spaced at regular intervals throughout the online community's period of existence. In addition, the role of building and maintaining social bonds among students proves to be central to developing the interpersonal trust and sense of community needed to engage in the academic work of the group, including reflecting thoughtfully on the material under study as well as the giving and receiving of constructive and positively worded feedback.