Social Capital in Virtual Learning Communities and Distributed Communities of Practice - 0 views
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Researchers in the social sciences and humanities consider social ties to be a social resource. Such a resource is referred to as social capital.
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Narayan and Pritchett (1997) suggested that communities with high social capital have frequent interaction, which in turn cultivates norms of reciprocity through which learners become more willing to help one another, and which improve coordination and dissemination of information and knowledge sharing. Social capital has been used as a framework for understanding a wide range of social issues in temporal communities. It has been used for the investigation of issues such as trust, participation, and cooperation.
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In one of the earliest definitions of social capital, Hanifan (1916) stated that social capital included "those intangible substances [that] count for most in the daily lives of people - namely goodwill, fellowship, sympathy and social intercourse among the individuals and families who make up a social unit." Many years later, Coleman (1988) followed a similar line of thinking when he suggested that social capital refers to supportive relationships among adults and children that promote the sharing of norms and values.
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Social capital has recently emerged as an important interdisciplinary research area. It is frequently used as a framework for understanding various social issues in temporal communities, neighbourhoods and groups. In particular, researchers in the social sciences and the humanities have used social capital to understand trust, shared understanding, reciprocal relationships, social network structures, common norms and cooperation, and the roles these entities play in various aspects of temporal communities. Despite proliferation of research in this area, little work has been done to extend this effort to technology-driven learning communities (also known as virtual learning communities). This paper surveys key interdisciplinary research areas in social capital. It also explores how the notions of social capital and trust can be extended to virtual communities, including virtual learning communities and distributed communities of practice. Research issues surrounding social capital and trust as they relate to technology-driven learning communities are identified.
