Community Incubator: supporting construction of online learners' community through visualization

From the viewpoint of social construction ism, community is not defined by external normative structure, but rather locally and contingently constructed through people's communication. Based on this interactive view of community, Community Incubator a Web-based BBS system for online schools, has been designed. The system supports community building through providing participants with resources to talk about their identity, group boundaries, and history of their activities. For this purpose, the system has three functions: (1) autoaddresser; (2) community visualizer; and (3) community editor. This paper discusses how these functions work to assist participants to construct an online community of learners.