Learning in Communities: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Human Centered Information Technology
About this ebook
This volume gathers together all of the scholarly materials directly emanating from a workshop held in August 2005, when a multidisciplinary group of scholars met at Penn State’s College of Information Sciences and Technology to discuss ‘learning in communities’. Initially, a sectioned report on the workshop was published as a special section in the Journal of Community Informatics in 2006. Subsequently, a special issue of 5 full papers was published in the Journal of Computer-Supported Cooperative Work, and a special section of 2 full papers was published in the International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning.
This collection of papers is not the definitive summary of learning in communities. It is assuredly more prolegomena than coda. Learning is increasing recognized as a critical facet of lifetime activity, one that must become better integrated with all that people do. At the same time, community structures are increasingly recognized as a critical category of social organization – flexible and adaptable, capable of innovation and development, and yet just as strongly nurturing and supportive. The promise of learning in communities lies ahead of us. This set of essays hopes to propel us all along that path.
About the author
John M. Carroll is Edward M. Frymoyer Chair Professor of Information Sciences and Technology at Pennsylvania State University. His research interests include methods and theory in human-computer interaction, particularly as applied to networking tools for collaborative learning and problem solving, and design of interactive information systems. Carroll serves on several editorial and advisory boards and is Editor-in-Chief of the ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interactions. He received the Rigo Award and the CHI Lifetime Achievement Award from the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the Silver Core Award from International Federation of Information Processing (IFIP), and the Goldsmith Award from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). He is a fellow of the ACM, the IEEE, and the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society.
