5.Justification+for+considering+the+proposed+e-Learning+Community+as+a+collective+learning+opportunity.

The e-learning community being formed for this project includes students, teachers, and IT professionals who fulfill different roles but share the common interest of learning and achieving. To maximise functionality, the community will represent a social structure that balances the common goals of learning with individual needs of the learner (McMillan & Chavis 1986). Teachers and students will build connections and trust through meaningful interactions in nonthreatening virtual and classroom environments to work towards achieving syllabus outcomes through constructivist educational practices. The e-Learning community, due it the nature of its membership, will be diverse in terms of cultural backgrounds and academic ability but cohesion will be ensured through an emphasis of respect and cooperation. According to Fiol (1994), d iversity, traditionally seen as divisive for a community, can also be an asset in term of adding to the wealth of knowledge and perspectives within the community.Ludford,Cosley, Frankowski &Terveen (2004) suggest that more active participation in communities is fostered by diversity. The community should essentially demonstrate evidence of synergy, whereby the community of teachers and students achieve greater learning through a more diverse set of learning experiences (Mitchell & Sackney 2000).

The proposed e-Learning community is designed to be a collective learning opportunity as supported by its inclusive structure and pedagogy as well as its dynamic nature. The program is structured to be inclusive with respect to targeting students from disadvantaged and isolated learning environments with the aim to provide opportunities for those students to individually and cooperatively construct and consolidate knowledge through access of a purpose-built simluated environment. Although the teaching strategies employed in the design of learning experience has a strong focus on metalanguage and is designed to aid students who experience difficulties with literacy, other elements of design such as Teen 2nd Life and Weblog challenge students with further extension activities and critical reflections. In implementation of a variety of learning experiences, the program aims to cater to the different learning styles of the students, namely, active and reflective learners, sensing and intuitive learners, visual and verbal learners, sequential and global learners(Fielder & Soloman). In featuring technology and pedagogy to directly engage students in learning, the e-Learning community should attract enthusiastic participation from members and result in the creation of social capital (Maison & Rennie 2006) that is anecdotally observed to be lacking in secondary classroom environments. It is predicted that the social capital created through the e-Learning community will ensure the continuation of meritocractic nature of the community, further self-regulation and shift in the look and feel of the virtual environment from further participation from students.

To secure the success of the program, the teaching sequence and learning activities are connected to syllabi (NSW Years 7-10 Geography Syllabus and ESL Scales). As educators are also members of this learning community, this ensures meaningful participation with the provision of a strong educational rationale. The level of commitment of teachers to the project is crucial to its success as teachers have traditionally fulfilled the role of the "presenter" of knowledge (Kwok-Wing 1993) in traditional learning environments with an emphasis on unidirectional flows of information resulting in superficial responses from students. A component of computer supported learning transforms the role of the teacher as a gatekeeper to facilitator, which results in critical thinking, and student ownership of knowledge that results in autonomy within a functional learning community (Kwok-Wing 1993).

In regards to the clientele and the educational context, teachers and IT administrators will moderate the virtual environments to protect the welfare of the participants and to encourage and ensure that interactions are appropriate and relevant to the learning context and to protect the rights of individual learners. The clearly articulated rules for participation in the community is particularly important to the level of particpation as students need to feel safety in their classroom and therefore virtual environments before they are able to access learning.