BUILDING E-LEARNING COMMUNITIES: TRUST AND PARTICIPATION

The e-learning process can be characterized as a community building exercise in which a planned intentional community is formed from various disparate individuals who share a common interest in the subject matter. However, building this community is complex and depends on instructors, software designers and users to implement effectively. This paper explores two fundamental elements in community building, trust and participation. It identifies specific elements in each of these and provides a solution for how it can be improved. Elements in trust were found to include personal knowledge and understanding as well as personal characteristics. One element in building this trust, which is more difficult in online than in person, was the use of personal information to build initial connections and attachments between members. After that, members had to participate in the community effectively in order to build further levels of trust. Participation was found to be dependent on a number of factors, including the functional design of the software and the correct tools being in place to ensure participation, personal characteristics of the participant (including, but not exclusively, gender, computer self-efficacy, motivation, and Internet experience) and the mode of communication (synchronous versus asynchronous). Synchronous communication was found to improve personal participation, or motivation and emotional recognition of participation, as well as cognitive participation, thus improving overall participation levels. Ultimately, the recommendation of this report was for instructors and designers to provide as many opportunities as possible for participant interaction, but to remember that the participation was primarily driven by participants themselves.