TY - JOUR AB - E‐learning is becoming a major component in academia today. Therefore, the success of e‐learning online communities is crucial in order to ensure their permanency and effectiveness. There is a need for formalized guidelines in e‐learning that instruct the designer (course instructor) on how to design, maintain, and manage a course. Some research has been done on the subject, but none proposes formalized guidelines, and none draws the results from the users’ perspectives. The users, students in this case, should be at the heart of the design and their thoughts, wishes, and needs should be implemented in the user‐centered design. In this study, through an iterative testing approach, the researchers formalized and validated a set of design heuristics that instruct an online educator on how to design, manage, deliver, and nurture an e‐Learning online community. VL - 2 IS - 4 SN - 1741-5659 DO - 10.1108/17415650580000045 UR - https://doi.org/10.1108/17415650580000045 AU - Abras Chadia AU - Ozok Ant AU - Preece Jenny PY - 2005 Y1 - 2005/01/01 TI - Research methods for validating and deriving guidelines for e‐learning online communities T2 - Interactive Technology and Smart Education PB - Emerald Group Publishing Limited SP - 207 EP - 219 Y2 - 2024/03/28 ER -