Supporting Online Learning Community

Community building is an important aspect of online learning and how to help e-tutors to support and facilitate online learning communities more effectively is becoming one of the essential issues for the success of online learning. The Sino-UK e-Educator project includes community building as one of the five themes in its curriculum which indicates how important this issue is. This paper will first outline the current theories and practice for e-tutors in terms of community, followed by a description of the basic principles adopted by the project designers as well as examples from the materials developed.