On community and meaning

A nice weblog here for those more on the teaching and designing end of online education at Weblogs in Higher Education, devoted to understanding the best pedagogical and other uses of weblogs and wikis in higher education. Here WHE quotes Stephen Downes on community centering in higher education weblogs.

There is no centralized place that constitutes community, there are only people, and resources, that are distributed, that are all Acting on their own behalf and in their own interests . . . where the network [that is, the community] consists of a set of self-selected relations using a variety of contextual information . . . to establish meaning, and where this meaning not only defines the community but emerges from the community.

Empty Lecture Halls

At the Sydney Morning Herald, the e-learning revolution noted.

Remember when universities were bursting at the seams with students sitting in the aisles, balancing books on their knees?

No more, it seems. E-learning is as likely to stand for empty lecture theatres as for the internet revolution, which has greatly increased the volume and range of course materials available online in the past five years.