2013 IEEE 63rd Annual Conference International Council for Educational Media (ICEM) 978-1-4799-3216-0 / $31.00 © 2013 IEEE A TREND ANALYSIS ON ONLINE LEARNING COMMUNITIES Dr. ùahin Gökçearlsan Abstract It is stated that the students complain about the online learning environments mostly because of the sense of being isolated.Belonging to a community is one of the critical variables for online learning environments. Many studies on the online learning community have been conducted around the world. This research aimed to analyze the studies according to variable frequency, work group, data collection tool, research methods and distribution of studies among countries. This study aims to evaluate the results of the publications that are found in the ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Full Text with the keyword “classroom community” and that were published between 2008 and 2012. This study will give insight into the existing studies and their shortcomings and it will also provide guidance for further research. Keywords:Online learningcommunity, sense of classroom community, trend analysis. 1. Introduction As online learning platforms become more important, studies which have been carried out demonstrate that 10 times more students will enroll to online lessons than traditional classrooms in higher education (Shea and Bidjerano, 2009). Leaners use synchronous and asynchronous communication tools with teachers and other learners, interact and have discussions with them thanks to the developments in the learning environment that technology offers (Wang, 2008). Discussion means “comparing ideas or congregating on purpose” (OED, 2000 pre. Rourke and Anderson, 2002). Wilson and Ryder (1998) define the group of people who support each other throughout learning programs as ‘a learning community’. Learning communities emerge in environments where everybody wants to learn and the mutual objective sense is present. Online learning community is a virtual environment in which people congregate for non-school learning (Bell, 2005). It is stated that the students complain about the online learning environments mostly because of the sense of being isolated (Gibbs, 1998). Online learning communities with strong sense of community should be developed in order to overcome the feeling of being isolated. The weakening sense of community as a result of the physical distance in distance education causes the students to have a feeling of not belonging to the community and a feeling of exclusion; and this situation may result in giving up the program (Ilgaz and Aúkar, 2009). Online learning community is distinguished from other communities by “voluntary sharing for supporting each other in learning” (Wilson and Ryder, 1998). Such interaction formed through sharing connects the students with each other and enables them to help each other in solving a common problem.The information is generated through relationships and interactions on online classroom environment. Learning community acquires new dimensions in this environment and developed to be an effective tool for learning (Palloff and Pratt, 1999). Sense of online learning community, of which importance in online learning is aforementioned, takes a considerable place in masters/PhD studies. Studies have been carried out to develop the learning community feeling and define the variables which affect it. It will be a reference for future studies if a past five year period analysis is made on these studies.