Virtual Learning Community and Web 2.0

The National Science Foundation defines "cyberlearning" as "the use of networked computing and communications technologies to support learning." The report of the NSF Task Force on Cyberlearning, Fostering Learning in the Networked World: The Cyberlearning Opportunity and Challenge, A 21st Century Agenda for the National Science Foundation, identifies cyberlearning as having "…the potential to transform education throughout a lifetime, enabling customized interaction with diverse learning materials on any topic..."

The task force report identifies potential ways in which advanced computing and communications technologies might be leveraged to support learning, highlighting opportunities for further research. In it, the task force offers 5 recommendations for the NSF to pursue:

Second Life is a user-created virtual world simultaneously played by thousands of people around the world. In this session, we’ll share our experiences of teaching in Second Life. Using the interaction combinations integration model we developed as a framework, we will describe our projects, outcomes, and recommendations.

The Road to Xavier portal for admitted students was named Best University Web Site 2006 by the Web Marketing Association. Beyond enabling the recruitment of a banner class, this Web 2.0 project laid the foundation for the Virtual Learning Commons, Xavier's comprehensive fully integrated Web presence to support 21st-century learners.

The author provides a long and comprehensive list of resources concerning teaching and learning with technology.