Self-supportive virtual communities

Learning Communities is one approach in individuals to improve their skills and knowledge. Web based learning communities provide additional capabilities such as global distribution of participants and asynchronous participation. The learning process in such communities is flexible and distributed, but still uni-directional: knowledge, advices and support is transferred from professors to students. In virtual Communities of Practice, apprentices ask questions and experts respond. Learning and personal improvement is a collaborative process, since all participants contribute their experience. In healthcare communities, especially in patient-centered ones, effort is spend on informing, training and supporting patients to become self-managed. Families, doctors, nurses inside the community target their contribution towards the patient. However, the ability of patients to help other patients, through their experiences, is neglected. Similarly, in communities of people with disabilities, the community members contribute their knowledge on how to facilitate everyday tasks and support other members to improve their quality of life. This work introduces the notion of “self-supportive communities”which combines the merits of “communities of practice” and “learning communities”, engulfs care-providers, care-givers and care-consumers and promotes the role of all members in the community activities. The paper discusses the dimensions of the self-supportive community, illustrates the main issues for the transition to the new type of community and summarizes the development process of the community. It also gives an example of a self supportive community for the deaf and the hearing.