Reflections on the impact of trust on social capital in Virtual Learning Communities (VLCs)

Giuseppina R. Mangione, M. Elisabetta Cigognini and M. Chiara Pettenati

International Journal of Networking and Virtual Organisations, 2010, vol. 7, issue 2/3, 272-294

Abstract: In this work, we focus on the relation between trust and the creation of social capital in specific organisations, i.e., Virtual Learning Communities (VLCs). We aim at demonstrating that effective online collaboration and knowledge construction are enabled by a set of trust-related elements which are grounding elements influencing results, motivation, collaboration and cognitive overload; these elements must be accounted for to sustain the overall learning process. To this extent, we provide an investigation model – a questionnaire – to point out the relation between trust and social capital as it is perceived by VLC members of a postgraduate online course. The result of the analysis of the questionnaire is the identification of trust-related elements and indicators to be used in the setup for building a more effective, collaboration-oriented online educational environment.

Keywords: trust; social capital; online collaboration; virtual learning communities; VLCs; questionnaire; web based communities. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.inderscience.com/link.php?id=31222 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ids:ijnvor:v:7:y:2010:i:2/3:p:272-294

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in International Journal of Networking and Virtual Organisations from Inderscience Enterprises Ltd
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sarah Parker ().