THE PROCESS OF COMMUNITY-BUILDING IN DISTANCE LEARNING CLASSES

The purpose of this study was to develop a theory about the process through which community formed in adult computer-mediated asynchronous distance learning classes. A grounded theory design incorporated archived class input as well as interviews with twenty-one students and three faculty members from three graduate-level distance education classes.A three-stage phenomenon was ascertained. The first stage was making friends on-line with whom...