Social structures for online learning: a design perspective

Designing an online course requires, among other things, outlining the 'social structures' of the learning community to be formed, i.e. the nature and size of groups of participants, communication flow and participants roles. The main aim of this paper is that of identifying criteria to serve as guidelines in outlining the interaction patterns complying with a given set of learning objectives. Different contextual elements require different social structures which may have to vary in time. The article puts forward some social structures models and elaborates on how adequate and practicable they are, on the basis of a retrospective analysis of specific courses in which such structures were employed.