Online Communities

I. Introduction

York university in Canada once created a web site called York University Student Center Online. This web site concern about the student activities on campus and outside. First lunched in 2001, the aim of York's website is entertainment and media publication. It has a good reputation among other Canadian universities' websites. The web site archives many of the student activities since its launch till today. Some of the website activities are holding online orientations for new students, weekly newsletter about student clubs and organizations, collecting donations, web register for events and concerts, online discussion with professors. The article York University Student Center Online says that lots of York's students has got active in the university from behind their computers screens only. These students where in some day in the past the typical character of the passive students. The articles also claims that many crimes came about from behind the website. Students misused the other students properties and tried to steal their work and ideas that they have published on the website (yorku.ca). These disadvantages appears to the surface always with the existence of a new web technology. York's website is an example of what so called an online community for college students. This new form of a web site can also be applied at AUS. Although an online community for AUS students may have some disadvantages, it is beneficial for four main reasons.

II. Online communities background

Community is an odd and rich term in the world of Internet public life. Like many key conception of the social sciences, it has specific and rigid meaning for scholars, and broader connotation when it is used in the information technology language. According to Christian Crumlish, an online community or virtual community "is a group whose members are connected by means of information technologies, typically the Internet" (Crumlish, p. 142). By this definition of the online community, the Internet is the term behind the internationally connected computers that link the people all around the world into online discussions by using the great CMC (Computer-Mediated Communications) technology. This general definition fulfills all the possible activities that can be done in an online community. Howard Rheingold in his book The Virtual Community claims that the important thing to keep in mind is that the worldwide interconnected telecommunication network that we use to make telephone calls in sharjah and Dubai can also be used to connect computers together at a distance, and you don't have to be an engineer to do it (rheingold.com). That gives us a hint on how online communities on the Internet started and how it got all this reputation.

There is a wide range of applications that online communities are being used for. People in weekends log in to the internet to chat, surf, or send e-cards to their friends. Other people join or build online communities on the internet for similar motivations, to be in touch with friends. Whether the purpose of building an online community is personal or public, these online communities are used to meet people for entertainment, business, planning and organizing, or to discuss different issues. E-learning is a type of online communities that targets the people who can not afford studying abroad. Also with E-learning, academic institution like universities can have online courses similar to those the offline ones. Sue Boetcher talks about other types of online communities that are specialized for business. She claims that businessmen use the internet to build their working team, work on projects with their colleges, and solve the problems they might face with the help of their partners (fullcirc.com). Another type of online communities is introduced by Howard Rheingold in his book The Virtual Community which is the civil society. Rheingold says that the civil society is a "web of informal relationships that exist independently of government institutions or business organizations, [which] is the social adhesive necessary to hold divergent communities of interest together into democratic societies" (rheingold.com).

College online communities is a very fresh entry to the online community world. The idea of that media can be used to build a community is quit old, hence the online communities that are being used by college students have started with the existence of the Internet. Lassen Grave says that the college online communities has first appeared in the United States in mid 90s, in the middle of the necessitate for network mediated groups that help the students to contact with other students in the same university. These college online communities has played same the role of the living room in a house. The student rest and relax in them away from the books pressures (Graves, p. 5).

Jenny Preece talks in her book Online Communities: Designing Usability, Supporting Sociability about the sociability on the internet and how online communities for college students can in the future achieve one of the goals Preece proposed. Universal access or global access is a prospective criteria of any online community that is under development. Statistics says that the amount of people who uses the internet double every 52 days. This huge growth of the users of the Internet raise a big question mark to hour heads, can all these people access the internet. The digital technology is impacting cultural mixtures, environmental concerns, and standard of living around the world. To grantee a universal access to online communities, the electronic dividers must be eliminated first. Preece think that doing so is an ultimate goal for the future. Researches in the fields of language and technology will be necessary to inform national and international agencies so that they can deploy resources appropriately (Preece, p. 441).

III. Disadvantages and arguments against online communities for college students

The topic of using online communities for college students has been attacked by many critics who claim that building an online community for college students has more disadvantages over its advantages. A disadvantage is that the students themselves may become addicted by the time they use these online communities. When evaluating York's online community, the article York University Student Center Online says that about 32 percent of the students used to set behind the screens chatting more than four hours per day (yorku.ca). Sue Boetcher argues that the students on the Internet who are chatting with other students are being socially isolated in early ages of their practical life. Boetcher also claims that there are "tens of thousands of college students spending their time