Community-embedded learning

Online learners often stay located in, and tied to, their communities, kinship networks, households, and workplaces. Institutions providing online education can thus create ties to communities as students draw their learning into networks in which they are already embedded. Frequent interactions across multiple media that are afforded by information and communication technologies (ICT) allow students to create strong ties with their fellow students and instructors. Those relationships provide a network of weak ties that is indirectly available to friends, coworkers, and community members who live and work near the students. Community-embedded learning that takes advantage of these strong and weak ties and is appropriate to ICT modes of delivery is important for two reasons. The various clienteles served by students while they earn their degrees will affect library and information science (LIS) education and outcomes, and LIS distance education offered via interactive ICT can directly affect the clienteles served.