The NetAcademy as a Medium for Learning Communities

The purpose of this article is to illustrate the concept of the NetAcademy for the design and implementation of online learning communities as collaborative learning environments. This paper describes the concept and realization of the NetAcademy platform dealing with its component-based design based on the media concept. After explaining the motivation of the research as an introduction in the second chapter, theoretical basics are outlined such as the definition of learning communities and the concept of media. In Sect. 3 the NetAcademy is illustrated as a medium for scientific and learning communities. In Sect. 4, a reference model of online learning communities is presented that is conceptualized in four views (layers) and four phases. Finally, Sect. 5 presents some conclusions.