Self-Organizing Networked Learning Environments

The Internet has long been touted as an answer to the needs of adult learners, providing a wealth of resources and the means to communicate in many ways with many people. This promise rarely has been fulfilled, and often, when it is, by mimicking traditional instructor-led processes of education. As a large network, the Internet has characteristics that differentiate it from other learning environments. As Kelly (1998) puts it, “the sum of the value of a network increases as the square of the number of members.” Because these interactions are mediated through computers and may be with many users at once, this is a notable underestimate.