Boyer, D. M., Designing for Community page 1 of 17 Boyer, D. Matthew presented 16 April 2009 at AERA 2009 Poster Session: Design Thinking: Across Formal and Informal Learning Environments Designing for Community: Understanding Sense of Community in Virtual Learning Environments As teachers increasingly go online to support their professional learning, they are met with a wide array of opportunities for engaging in what researchers and developers have termed virtual community. In 2004’s Designing for virtual communities in the service of learning (Barab et al., 2004), as with other reports of research surrounding online communities, various authors investigate what community means in virtual environments. Comparing these online groups to physical-world communities of practice, researchers continue to explore the ways in which virtual environments can support professional learning communities. What is not clear is just what community means for researchers, designers, and participants. This paper begins to summarize various aspects of community that authors have previously identified, in an attempt to create a framework for understanding not only what community means in a virtual learning environment, but also how designers who seek to build online community can approach the creation of their online environments. This framework supports understanding sense of community, an individual participant’s thoughts and feelings about their identity and connection to the online group. While the broad term community is discussed, the purpose of this paper is to focus on creating both conceptual and operational descriptions of sense of community. Through an interpretation of current literature, as well as analysis of an online learning environment intentionally designed to support a sense of community in participants, this research provides a design framework that both informs and is informed by research, and suggests ideas for practical design applications. I begin with an overview of several areas related to community in virtual learning environments, specifically research around communities of practice, teacher professional development in learning communities, and virtual communities. From this foundational information, I present a framework to identify the aspects of a virtual learning community that contribute to understanding an individual’s sense of community. I discuss this emerging framework as it is informed by research, as it looks in practice, and as it may be intentionally designed. Purpose As is evidenced by scholarly investigations into online community from a variety of research perspectives (Barab et al., 2001; Dede, 2004; Gray, 2004; Neff, 2002; Palinscar et al., 1998; Preece, 2000; Riel & Polin, 2004; Schlager & Schank, 1997; Selwyn, 2000; Smith & Kollock, 1999), we as researchers have been intrigued by the possibility of taking what we know about physical world communities and using that knowledge to create virtual environments that support similar types of connection and communication between community members. The ability to facilitate organizations online has led to the use of virtual environments to support professional learning, from virtual organizations like TappedIn (Schlager et al., 2002) and the