Determining the sustainability of virtual learning communities in E-learning platform

The e-learning system might remove the limitation of learning time and space and offer more learning opportunities. Knowledge-based virtual communities formed in e-learning platform are collaborative groups developed for creating new knowledge. However, it is difficult to choose and introduce the appropriate virtual community, owing to characteristics of intrinsic ambiguity and lack of evaluating methods. In this paper, we propose a feasible appraising framework based on fuzzy AHP to decide the sustainability of various types of virtual communities under e-learning platform in university. To validate this framework, a case study was conducted to demonstrate the analysis processes and results. Data of pairwise comparison for fuzzy AHP were collected by questionnaires. The results indicate that the virtual community of group forum possesses highest priority, the next is course forum, and the lowest is online discussion forum. Thus, the instructors could allocate resource to develop various types of virtual community according to their priority.