Informal learning in virtual communities

This paper deals with the concept of atypical, non-formal learning in virtual communities on the Internet. We focus on some specific kinds of communities and examine how they operate, how their members interact, what values they share, what kind of knowledge they gather and their social impact. Virtual communities are then compared to real-life communities. We subsequently focus on the learning process within virtual communities. We examine what kind of information and knowledge is available in some particular virtual communities, how it is gathered, organized and spread among their members. Finally, the learning process of virtual communities is compared to that of Open Universities. Several case studies are employed