More than half of the classrooms in the United States are wired to the Internet, and the number of classrooms connected is rapidly increasing (NCES, 1999). As this network infrastructure is put in place, teachers and learners can form and participate in network-based learning communities. But for these communities to function in productive ways, we need to better understand how these communities are formed, grow, function in some mature steady state, and decline and terminate. A better understanding of this “life cycle” allows teachers and learners to better function in these network-based learning communities and permits the development of institutional structures that more appropriately support learning and teaching in these new media.

In this chapter, we review studies of network-based learning communities, especially those communities formed around collaborative projects, and present evidence for systematic patterns of change in these communities over time. Such communities are born, undergo growth, reach a level of mature functioning, and then undergo decline and cease to function. Like biological organisms, this life cycle can be truncated when the community is not properly supported or when external factors intervene in some traumatic way. We describe the life cycle of network-based communities by examining in depth an extended case study of a network-based learning activity. We conclude with a discussion of the kinds of support needed to encourage the growth and mature functioning of productive network-based learning communities.

Review

There have been a number of pioneering efforts to explicate the nature of network-based learning communities.