World Association of Online Education

The fact is that people in many countries are rapidly using modern technological information and communication skills. Around the globe, people are involved in Internet communication. People around the world are participating in various kinds of
e-communities, due in part to the informality and free access of Internet e-groups. Virtual learning communities and the contents related to them are constantly developing and expanding.

            Cyber communities are creating new and various cultures facilitated by emerging technological possibilities and norms. We need to pay attention to specific, concrete guidance as to how to communicate effectively via Web sites, e-mail, e-discussion groups, e-communities, message boards, audio conferences, and voice mail. Further, we must address effective

e-teaching, videoconferencing, videostreaming, Webcasting, e-job hunting, and e-publishing.  As we learn and master effective cyber communication skills, we can be enhanced personally and professionally, not diminished or displaced, by modern communication technology.

            Pierre Levy (1998) contends that communication in the virtual world can cultivate collective intelligence, which can encourage the development of intelligent communities.  He states that sharing of information, knowledge, and expertise in e-communities can promote a kind of dynamic, collective intelligence, which can affect all spheres of our lives. He contends that the virtual world can foster positive connections, cooperation, bonds, and civil interactions.  In e-groups or communities, which are flexible, democratic, reciprocal, respectful, and civil, this collective intelligence can be continually enhanced and enhancing (Levy, 1998).

           Researchers in science, education, business, and industry are pooling their collective intelligence, knowledge, and data in collaboratories. These are virtual centers in which people in different locations work together in real time, as if they were all in the same place. Science, education, commerce, and industry have become increasingly global. Collaboration, which is efficient, maximizing, and time-saving among distance researchers in these fields, has become more critical.

 As distance technology has become more efficient and cost-effective, distance collaboration has become more common. The National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health have encouraged grant recipients to form collaboratories. These scholarly, virtual groups are cybersteps beyond distance sharing of asynchronous data when researchers individually take what they want from online databases. Collaboratories enable researchers at distant locations to interact, hold lab meetings, and work with data in real time (Buyya, 2001).

 In the various forms of e-groups or e-communities participants are free to communicate ideas without the limits related to the physical body, i.e. appearance, gender, race, ethnicity, and status symbols. Levy (1998) suggests further that they are free to participate in virtual community and to add to the collective intelligence.

In Cyberspace…each of us is a potential transmitter and receiver in a space that is  qualitatively differentiated…constructed by its participants, and explorable.  Here we no longer encounter people exclusively by their name, geographical location,  or social rank, but in the context of centers of interest, within a shared landscape  of meaning and knowledge…Cyberspace provides large and geographically dispersed groups with instruments for cooperatively constructing a shared context… communication now involves participants in a form of interaction…This dynamic …collective context serves as an agent of collective intelligence, a kind of living bond…Cyberspace promotes connections.