RodeWorks

At a Nercomp presentation by Yale’s own Jane Alexander on building online communities in blended courses.  And in this presentation she discusses the time requires to build an effective community is longer than the standard 14 week class.  This collaboration diagram from the Mopsos blog nicely presents the idea that the level of trust in a community is related to the amount of interaction engaged in.  IM requires a lot of trust, newsletters require very little. 

Mopsos - Collaboration tools for communities of practice

Certainly the amount of time a group is together, and the higher the level of shared experiences, the higher the level of trust.  And the more effective the online interactions.