Facebooking in Distance Education: Constructing Virtual Communities of Practice

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

The growth of distance education warrants a closer look at how virtual communities of
practice form in asynchronous online classrooms. Prior studies have sought to identify a
process to virtual community formation, which may vary depending upon the media used for
collaboration. This microstudy examines how one student group in a distance writing course
used the popular social media site Facebook to construct community and whether the stages
of virtual community development were observed in this setting. Findings suggest that
revisions might be made to our current understanding of the process of building virtual
community within small groups. “Othering” and social norming should be considered as an
important step in the group’s progress toward a co-identity and knowledge-sharing
community. The construction of social norms is so important to group co-identity that it
transgresses the established norms of communicating through Facebook. Further, the use of
a social media site for group communication may encourage social interaction and
cyber-play among the group, to either the detriment of work-related discourse or benefit of
friendship-making. Further, the process of virtual community formation is largely iterative
where the quality of discourse depends on the nature of group tasks rather than time.

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