| This collection makes a valuable contribution to the already large literature of online learning communities. The 16 chapters come from diverse international sources, but they are satisfyingly narrow in their focus on user-centered design, analysis, and evaluation.
The opening chapter provides a role model for what follows: good reviews of the literature, description of technology, compelling principles, and evidence-based reports. It is gratifying to see that this community of researchers has made the transition from controlled experiments to strategies that blend quantitative, qualitative, and ethnographic methods. The multiple strategies, ranging from observations and interviews with small groups to automated logging and surveys of multiple courses, seem well matched with the high-level goals of these researchers, even though there will always be questions of adequate controls and replicability.
These authors are deeply interested in intention, self-reflection, creativity, and community, and they demonstrate admirable attention to contemporary topics such as trust, privacy, empathy, and personal responsibility. Several authors applied advanced interfaces concepts related to collaboration strategies, visualization tools, and social network analysis, thereby contributing to progress in those fields. |
