This review looks at a number of key factors important to growing successful online learning communities and provides some relevant strategies for this.

Source: Futurelab

Community building in online distance education is important to a successful learning experience because it alleviates feelings of isolation for both students and faculty members. Ruth E. Brown describes the process by which students become part of an online distance education community, identifying three stages: “making friends,” “community conferment,” and the development of “camaraderie” (Brown, 2001). The purpose of this article is to present concrete, specific, and practical pedagogical strategies to implement Ruth E. Brown’ 3-stage theory of community building in online distance learning courses.

Source: JOLT - Journal of Online Learning and Teaching

These posts by Michael Martinez should help new edubloggers Build a New Community and Develop Web Friends and Allies

These are the best posts I have read, so far, about how to start to network to build your own community

Managing Online Communities. I realised the other day that I’ve been participating in online communities for over a decade, from telnet-based chat rooms via mailing lists to Facebook. Here, mainly for my own reference, are the major repeating themes I’ve seen over that time

Source: One Man & His Blog

Read more about managing online communities:
- AOC Managing Communities - WikiContent
- Building Online Communities
- Online communities: Growing an Internet garden
- Beyond Message Boards - Ideas for the New Communities
- How to Build a User Community, Part 1
- Updating my basic article on online facilitation

Britt Watwood replied to the thread Vizualisation of social networks - College 2.0:

It is a small world but I thought Gabriela and Eduardo would find this interesting…as it revolves around our membership here in College 2.0
It is fascinating to me that in the space of a month, two of us here in Virginia made contacts with colleagues in China and yet were linked back to a colleague in Romania, thanks to a colleague in Uruguay. Thomas Friedman is right, it is a very flat world

iAlja: What makes Twitters Tweet?

Twitter is the ultimate social network - anywhere, anytime.

To build a special connection between forum members and strengthen the forum community

Ideas and Thoughts from an EdTech - If you ain’t a feed, I don’t read

If you don’t blog but have some significant ideas, learning, teaching to share, I likely may not know about your or even follow your work. Which is to say that my RSS aggregator has become the primary means by which I learn.

1- A Portal to Colleges & Universities on MySpace
2- MySpace Best & Worst Practices for Higher Education
3- Internet Marketing: Marketing on MySpace

I have just created College 2.0. a Ning social network to discuss Online Learning, CMS, PLE, Web2.0 and Open Learrning for Highered. We welcome University students, faculty, alumni, and administrators to join the College 2.0 Network network.

Find and Stay in Touch with New Friends.
Features of the College 2.0 Network include:

1- Discussion Forum with RSS:
Start and tag a discussion.
Add discussion posts and reply to those posts.
Click through the personal profile pages of other members engaged in the discussion.
View all discussions across your social network.
2- Member “chatterwall” for others to leave chatters.
3- Member Profile Page with photo
4- Member Blog with RSS:
Create blog posts with photos, files, and moods.
Manage blog posts and moderate comments.
5- Access the Network’s Blog Posts (from all members) via RSS
6- Easy access to all your friends in the network
7- Networking. Its easy to make new friends
8- Photo Sharing
9- Video Sharing