Users involvement in Learning Communities: a case study
Abstract: The participation of students in virtual learning communities has revealed to be a constant issue in technology-enhanced learning. Although supported by many valuable services and modern software platforms, it is difficult to have a participation of students to virtual communities that goes beyond the mere download of files. In this paper, we will present a secondary effect of Learning management systems on users’ participation, i.e., the creation of polls on general topics proposed by the LMS administrators. The answers are on a voluntary base and are collected anonymously. The surprising results are in the very high participation of students collected during the last ten years, results that show how students like the idea of answering these polls together with the average activities performed inside the platform. The other interesting part is the correlation between users’ participation in the virtual community of a course, and their interaction with polls.