Sasha Barab, the late Rob Kling, and James Gray have a new book out on e-learning (broadly conceived). Designing for Cirtual Communities in the Service of Learning. Cambridge U Press, 2004 (pb as well as hb). There's articles about communities of practice, learning-oriented chat rooms, discourse analysis (Susan Herring), as well as analyses of more formal e-learning situations. Nice links between the techno and the social. Emmanuel Koku and I have an article in it, "Scholarly Networks as Learning Communities: The Case of TechNet". We use social network analysis, including block model, to study social and scholarly relations and social structure in a semi-visible college, interestingly enough of people who study internet and society. Barry _____________________________________________________________________ Barry Wellman Professor of Sociology NetLab Director wellman at chass.utoronto.ca http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman Centre for Urban & Community Studies University of Toronto 455 Spadina Avenue Toronto Canada M5S 2G8 fax:+1-416-978-7162 To network is to live; to live is to network _____________________________________________________________________