Whether learning is on-line or not, the process of establishing a sense of a community
of learners is a challenge in any classroom. The benefits of belonging to the
community, and in this instance, the virtual community need to outweigh the costs.
Rheingold (1993) refers to these benefits as the 'collective goods' (knowledge capital,
social capital and communion), for the community to work, these have to be more
valuable than the technical difficulties encountered, costs in times, or monetary costs.