Summary

As an open and distance education system with Chinese characteristics, the Self-taught Higher Education Examinations(STE) has contributed greatly for the social and economic fast development by cultivating millions of educated laborers since established in 1981. However, due to its weakness in learning guide and support service, STE confronts the problems of poor learning effect, low pass rate in course exams, and high drop-out rate. For fundamentally changing this situation, National Education Examinations Authority (NEEA) has explored ways to enhance the learning support for the self-taught learners. Taking use of modern information technology and building online learning community is one of these endeavors. The online learning community provides a possibility for improving learning environment, building support system and promoting learning effectiveness. Beginning from an introduction of the background and issues that STE faced in the new century, this paper explains the importance of learning support for STE system. A review of the literature on the concepts, theoretical framework and establishment of online learning community is then presented. This paper also summarizes some initiatives on building online supports for self-taught learners by NEEA in recent years. A series of suggestions on constructing online communities are suggested as a conclusion