From Informal to Formal: Creating the Australasian Computing Education Community

The advent of Web technology has enabled new ways in which groups of people may interact, leading to the development of online communities. In an academic environment these virtual communities can facilitate collaboration and provide new ways for educators to communicate and disseminate their ideas and practices. A website designed to support a community of educators interested in scholarship and research in computing education has been developed. We have called this the Australasian Computing Education Community website. In deciding to build an online environment for the Australasian Computing Education Community the challenge we faced was in designing a facility that the members would find useful. In doing this we needed to consider the needs of the Community and the purpose that the website would fulfill. In this paper we explore the concept of community and present an online environment that will facilitate the development of the Australasian Computing Education Community, providing ongoing support for their scholarship and research in computing education.