Creating and maintaining a community is an important aspect to online learning, and as universities think more about online vs. remote opportunities, it's important for teachers to have support in moderating and maintaining online communities of students.
Leiden University's Centre for Innovation has been testing and learning about how to develop communities and collaborative environments online since their founding seven years ago.
Using this expertise, they have published two resources to help teachers and anyone trying to build a community online, focusing on moderation and building engagement.
How to Moderate an Online Community
In this article some of the pitfalls of community moderation are discussed, as well as tips to make your community into a success. Communities are seldom successful if they are not maintained, nor do they spontaneously become very active. It takes dedicated attention.
How to build an engaged Online Community
This article looks into how to create an online community, and make sure that the participants are engaged so that its content achieves its full potential.