Pre-service Learning Communities on the Internet: How Taxi Drivers, Medical Students, and Law Students are Transforming Their Own Education

Studies that explore issues around online learning have become increasingly common in the educational research literature of late. Most of these focus attention on programmed offerings on the Internet, usually modules or entire courses that are part of an educational institution’s attempt to replicate in-person provision online. This thesis examines a very different breed of non-institutional electronic group that organises itself around supporting learners—the ad hoc, organic online learning community (OOLC). Three independent OOLCs made up of three very different groups of learners: US medical students, London cabbies-in-training (who call themselves Knowledge Boys and Girls), and distance learning law students, form the heart of this comparative case-study that seeks both to describe these groups that are created by, governed by, and intended for learners; and to interrogate the concept of learner-benefit.