A Review of the Instructional Practices for Promoting Online Learning Communities

Abstract

An effective learning community helps foster positive student learning experiences and outcomes. However, in distance learning environments, the communication barriers inevitably hinder the interaction among the students because of the lower levels of social presence. These barriers present challenges in building learning communities in an online environment. In the past 20 years, distance education researchers and educators have studied and experimented with various instructional strategies and tools to reduce these barriers in order to facilitate students to form effective online learning communities. This systematic literature review examines the instructional strategies and tools that have been used to achieve the goal. The review results will be reported in terms of the essential elements of OLC building, types of instructional strategies and tools, and the instructional implications.