mike welcome back....this has been sitting on my desk for sometime.. it looks promising although I haven't had the time to read it: "Designing for Virtual Communities in the Service of Learning" edited by Barab et. al. (2004 Cambridge). You might also check out the literature on CSCL (Computer Supported Collaborative learning), depending on what you are looking for. You have an article in "CSCL 2" , edited by koschmann et. al. (2002, LEA). If that is interesting, Gerry Stahl has lots of CSCL articles on-line. Check out http://www.cis.drexel.edu/faculty/gerry/cscl/papers/ch20.htm for an intersting theoretical article from the 2003 CSCL conference in Norway.
If you can be more specific, I might be able to point to other items of interest.
jim Mike Cole wrote:
Does anyone know of a good source or sources for chat approaches to virtual communities? Need to know. mike