Most learning takes place in communities. People continually learn through their participation with others in everyday activities. Such learning is important in contemporary society because formal education cannot prepare people for a world that changes rapidly and continually. We need to live in learning communities.

This collection of papers is not the definitive summary of learning in communities. It is assuredly more prolegomena than coda. Learning is increasingly 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 intends to propel us all along that path.

Autorentext

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.

Inhalt
I.- Community Inquiry and Informatics: Collaborative Learning Through ICT.- The Participant-Observer in Community-Based Learning as Community Bard.- Learning in Communities: A Distributed Intelligence Perspective.- Spiders in the Net: Universities as Facilitators of Community-Based Learning.- Designing Technology for Local Citizen Deliberation.- Supporting the Appropriation of ICT: End-User Development in Civil Societies.- Developmental Learning Communities.- Social Reproduction and Its Applicability for Community Informatics.- Communities, Learning, and Democracy in the Digital Age.- Radical Praxis and Civic Network Design.- II.- Local Groups Online: Political Learning and Participation.- Community-Based Learning: The Core Competency of Residential, Research-Based Universities.- Sustaining a Community Computing Infrastructure for Online Teacher Professional Development: A Case Study of Designing Tapped In.- Expert Recommender: Designing for a Network Organization.- Patterns as a Paradigm for Theory in Community-Based Learning.- Architecture, Infrastructure, and Broadband Civic Network Design: An Institutional View.- Supporting Community Emergency Management Planning Through a Geocollaboration Software Architecture.