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The Fully Online Learning Community (FOLC), developed at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology (UOIT), is a social-constructivist model, addressing a paradigm shift in employment skills, and supporting key elements of transformational learning. Adopting a Problem-based Learning (PBL) approach to activity design, FOLC has served as basis for both undergraduate and graduate, fully online degree programs for almost a decade. In this time, it has demonstrated its ability to facilitate richly collaborative, socially cohesive, and constructively critical, learning communities supported by a flexible array of synchronous and asynchronous digital affordances. FOLC represents a "divergent fork" of the Community of Inquiry (CoI) design to foreground the synergistic dynamics of social and cognitive presence, the role of professional educators as co- learners, the community-oriented nature of knowledge construction, the mediating role of digital competence and open technologies in fully online learning, and the transformational potential of democratized communication and assessment practices. Having positioned FOLC conceptually, a developing research agenda, aimed at grounding the FOLC on a broader body of empirical data, is presented. The underlying argument is that rich, transformative learning communities can be established in fully online programs, and these communities can have a significant democratizing effect on participants and the broader social context.

In an important way, this study investigates various aspects of community development and social support among participants in computer technology-enhanced distance education programs. The current analysis focuses on the characteristics that define communities and how students build and maintain them. Drawing on a series of interviews with 17 students, the study highlights the importance of community and its contribution to supporting them. This process is very important in developing a sense of community among students. Students derive satisfaction from the temporal intimacy of live lectures and the associated whisper facility for socializing in Web Relay Chat. They also exploited the near-simultaneous use of email and the timing of assignment submissions to subtly initiate email exchanges among themselves, as observed in the study. Overall, the interviews conducted in the study indicated that a strong sense of community benefits both individuals and programs, supporting educators' efforts to create such communities for online learners.

The article describes the development of a disciplinary living/learning community in political science; the authors, two faculty members, started the community in the fall of 2012. The faculty leaders describe the various practices used to integrate political science courses in two subfields: American politics and international politics. In particular, the authors consider how, over the past five semesters, they have adapted their teaching practices to provide members of the LLC with a more holistic understanding of political processes, methods, and outcomes. They argue that their model would be applicable to a wide array of disciplines.

In recent years, scholars have become critical of mainstream leadership development approaches. In particular, Petriglieri and Petriglieri refer to the dehumanization of leadership, whereby leadership breaks its ties to identity, community, and context. The purpose of this paper is to present an approach for humanizing leadership using the case example of George Washington University's Organizational Leadership & Learning (OLL) program. Embedded in the critical leadership studies (CLS) approach, the humanizing principles, and the humanistic leadership paradigm, the OLL program's leadership learning approach focuses on building a learning community and stakeholder engagement. I describe its pedagogical goals and instructional strategies that help promote a psychologically safe space where learners build trusting relationships, integrate diverse perspectives through respectful dialogues, and develop a sense of the "common good" and culture of equity through issue-centered learning. Using classrooms as "identity spaces" and "leadership learning laboratory" allows learners in the program to practice the co-construction of ideas through mutual influence and interactions. This paper makes a valuable contribution to developing future leadership development programs.

Abstract The stories of three adult students who completed bachelor's degrees in an intensive learning community are examined. A controlling narrative learned from families and the culture had led them to interrupted educations and lives that failed to reflect their full capacities. With the guidance of faculty mentors and the collaboration of a peer community, they each reexamined, reinterpreted, and rewrote their failure narratives. Once they understood how they and their peers had accepted society's construction of their identities, these three were able to revise those self-constructions. Further contextualizing their experiences through the lenses of history, art, and literature enabled Helen, Ben, and Millie to make dramatic personal transformations. Helen, a single mother on welfare, rejected the hypothesis that an artist must be a genius or a man. Ben, a Vietnam-era veteran, let go of the macho warrior model and adopted a different way of contributing to the human community. Millie, an African American activist, found the common experience that connected her to both White workingclass women and Cambodian refugees.(Adult Learning, Learning Comunity, Narrative, Collaboration, Mentors, Peer Learning, Personal Transformation)

In an effort to move towards a whole-of-government approach to service delivery to Indigenous communities, the Council Of Australian Governments has developed a Reconciliation Framework that is designed to advance the process of reconciliation and address Indigenous disadvantage. Incorporating the concept of shared responsibility, it formulates the basis for a new way of doing business in partnership with Indigenous communities. This initiative is being trialled in 10 Indigenous communities across Australia including the Indigenous community in the ACT, under the rubric of Indigenous Community Co-ordination Pilots. This paper examines a number of reasons why an Indigenous school is a viable option for consideration in the context of the Indigenous Community Coordination Pilot in the ACT. The paper provides an overview of current policy formulation with a specific emphasis on the concept of social capital and how it might be used to facilitate both learning and the establishment of networks within and around the school that support the educational process. It reviews the principles underpinning recent initiatives in Indigenous education that have worked to encourage improved participation, engagement and outcomes. It advocates the development of an urban Indigenous educational philosophy based in the lived experience and culture of Indigenous people living in contemporary urban environments, and in their aspirations for the future. The key points of the discussion are then synthesised in order to inform the development of a model that moves beyond the traditional parameters and concept of the school to bring together the school, parents, families and community in an Indigenous learning community.