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In the USA, as elsewhere, there is an ongoing need to improve quality in higher education. Quality improvement models from business have not been widely embraced, and many other approaches to accountability seem to induce minimal compliance. This paper aims to contend that learning communities represent a viable alternative in the quest for quality. By restructuring the curriculum and promoting creative collaboration, learning communities have become a major reform effort in US colleges.

The paper provides an overview of learning community theory and core practices and four original case studies of institutions that have made learning communities a long‐term focus of their quality improvement efforts.

Findings include: effective learning communities are clearly positioned, aimed at large arenas and issues and are central to the organization's mission; learner‐centered leadership is a key component of effective programs; learning communities offer a high leverage point for pursuing quality; effective learning communities meet faculty where they are; successful initiatives create new organizational structures, roles and processes; successful programs attract and reward competent people and build arenas for learning from one another; and successful programs have a living mission and a lived educational philosophy reaching constantly toward more effective practices.

Educators will draw rich lessons from this concise overview of learning community theory and practice and the story of these successful institutions.

An increasing number of companies have become aware of the considerable commercial potential of firm-hosted online communities (FOC) and initiated their own platform for different purposes. However, limited research has systematically explored oppositional loyalty and customer satisfaction in the context of FOC. By applying the expectation–confirmation model (ECM), the purpose of this paper is to investigate the determinants of oppositional loyalty and satisfaction from the perspective of social capital and e-quality.

A research model was tested by applying partial least squares technique, and data were collected from a survey of members (n=512) of two popular smartphone communities in China.

Results revealed that satisfaction, trust and shared language are the significant antecedents of oppositional loyalty. Benefits confirmation, information quality, service quality, trust and social tie exert strong effects on the formation of satisfaction.

This study is an original empirical research guided by several theories. It contributes to the information system usage literature and provides opinions regarding how users’ oppositional loyalty and satisfaction can be developed in the FOCs. This work also widens the application of ECM and provides an alternative theoretical framework for future research on oppositional brand loyalty.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a coherent theory and strategy for the achievement of quality outcomes that is meaningful and relevant to people at all levels of society. These should help the quality professional engage with people at all levels of society in the development of a culture that appreciates quality, systems and excellence. The research draws on the work of the community quality councils movement in the USA and sought to build on this experience in a village in northwest Ireland.

Action research employing an ethnographic type approach to a four year immersion period in a small industrious community. Its inductive nature and naturalist mode of enquiry did not lend itself to either the generation or analysis of quantitative data. Nevertheless it yielded many rich complex pictures or patterns of qualitative information requiring long periods of reflection to decipher the sense and meaning in them.

The findings can be encapsulated in one sentence “To achieve quality outcomes we must practise excellence and maintain systems that are fit for purpose”. This requires a radical reworking of Deming’s system of profound knowledge (SoPK) to make it relevant to the human complex adaptive systems that permeate the twenty-first century. These operate as autonomous service providers in a rapidly changing environment.

The findings of this research have transferability to all sectors in society pursuing purposeful activity. It is relevant at individual, interest-group, industry, institution and community level. It should make the development of a “quality culture” more attainable at all levels.

Provides quality professionals with new terminology and imagery to engage with, analyse and help autonomous human activity systems in the twenty-first century. It moves Deming’s SoPK to a new level more suited to human systems.

By explaining quality, excellence and systems in easily understood and accepted terms the Grange Excellence Model allows every individual, interest-group, industry and institution share the same language and images as they pursue quality outcomes. This unified approach could transform communities and society in general.

The research generates a seismic shift in the appreciation of quality, excellence and systems making them relevant and meaningful to people at all levels of society. This provides quality professionals with a methodology, images and vocabulary that will facilitate productive engagement with purposeful systems at all levels of complexity.

The purpose of this paper is to draw on the social cognitive theory to identify the determinants of online knowledge community user continuance, which reflects a user’s continued use.

Based on the 271 valid responses collected from a survey, structural equation modelling was employed to examine the research model.

The results indicated that the cognitive factors of outcome expectation and the environmental factors of system quality and knowledge quality significantly affect a user’s continuance intention, which, in turn, affects continuance usage.

The results imply that service providers need to enhance community platforms and improve knowledge quality in order to retain users and facilitate their continuance.

Although previous research has examined online knowledge community user behaviour from multiple perspectives such as the social exchange theory and the motivational theory, it has seldom explored the relative effects of personal cognitions and environmental factors on user behaviour. This research fills the gap.

By expanding the technology acceptance model, the purpose of this paper is to provide a research model to examine the impact of online (information quality, system quality and service quality) and offline (offline activities) features on the sustainability of virtual communities. Design/methodology/approach – Based on a survey of 165 community members, the paper uses structural equation modeling approach to investigate the research model.

The findings indicate that perceived of usefulness, perceived ease of use and offline activities are determinants of sustainability of virtual communities. In addition, information quality affects perceived usefulness, while system‐quality and service quality influence both perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness of virtual communities.

Since this study only considered non‐profit virtual communities, it is unclear whether these analytical results can be generalized to other virtual communities. Further research can apply this research model to examine profit‐oriented virtual communities, such as eBay.com.tw or brand communities.

To sustain a successful virtual community, attention must be paid to enhance both online and offline interactions, including content management, specific sets of web site functions and offline communication. Virtual community providers can apply the findings of this study to focus on the determinants of success for their virtual communities.

Theoretically, while drawing upon the extended TAM, this paper provides a model that is capable of understanding the determinants of sustainability of virtual communities. From a managerial perspective, the findings should provide further insight into member behaviors, leading to more effective strategies for expanding the virtual community.

In this study, the authors use the term “e-quality” to refer to information quality, system quality and service quality. This study aims to focus on e-quality, exploring and comparing users' perceptions of digital libraries and virtual communities in the hope that the results of this study can help lead to better understanding of the exact nature of e-quality as perceived by users.

A large-scale survey was conducted for data collection. Data collected from 334 users of digital libraries and virtual communities were used for data analysis.

The study finds that users are likely to perceive a higher level of information quality, system quality and service quality of digital libraries than of virtual communities.

The authors suggest that librarians do not need to have concerns over the challenge brought by virtual communities, which indeed have an increasing impact on the way a lot of people seek and gather information. Instead, they should encourage their users to use both digital libraries and virtual communities. The authors believe that the usage of these two types of information sources by users can efficiently inform each other, thus facilitating the e-quality of both digital libraries and virtual communities to reach excellence.

Building on the information systems (IS) success model, this study explores and compares users' perceptions of digital libraries and virtual communities in terms of e-quality, which the authors think presents a new view for digital library research and practice alike.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how quality dimensions in independently owned online brand communities influence purchase intentions via uncertainty reduction and the role of involvement.

This work validates the model and hypotheses through non-probabilistic sampling. The online questionnaire was made on the website of MySurvey and an invitation letter was posted to the forums. The respondents received the questionnaire items translated into Chinese. The final survey sample consisted of 235 respondents.

Empirical results confirm that as for independently owned online brand communities, their information quality and relationship quality are effective tools for influencing purchase intentions via uncertainty reduction. In addition, the authors demonstrate that involvement has a positively moderating influence on the relationship between uncertainty reduction and purchase intentions.

The current study moves beyond uncertainty reduction to demonstrate that information quality and relationship quality of forums influenced purchase intention via uncertainty reduction and the moderating variable such as involvement.

Prior research on user-generated content (UGC) contributions has primarily focused on self-centered or other-centered motives, paying limited attention to the concept of enlightened self-interest, in which both motives coexist in a single organism. Additionally, the factors influencing enlightened self-interest and their effects in different circumstances are yet to be explored. Drawing on theoretical lenses rooted in the switching barriers perspective and stimulus–organism–response framework, this study posits that dedication-based switching barriers (community–member relationship quality, member–member relationship quality, and content attractiveness) positively relate to enlightened self-interest, whereas constraint-based switching barriers (switching costs) moderate the relationship between dedication-based switching barriers and enlightened self-interest in social media communities (SMCs). Members' enlightened self-interest in turn influences both the creation and co-creation of UGC.

This study comprised two quantitative studies: an online survey-based study (Study 1) and an online scenario-based experiment (Study 2). Study 1 surveyed 613 respondents, while Study 2 included 749 participants. Both studies employed structural equation modeling and bootstrapping techniques for analysis.

The findings indicate that dedication-based switching barriers positively affect users' enlightened self-interest, which in turn is positively associated with UGC creation and co-creation. Switching costs moderate the relationship between relationship quality (community–member and member–member) and enlightened self-interest.

This study complements the current understanding of how the association between dedication- and constraint-based switching barriers and users' enlightened self-interests influence user-generated contributions.

This paper seeks to establish design quality indicators (DQIs) that can be utilized for assessing the design of community centers, with an emphasis on the technical, functional, and behavioral performance domains.

A comprehensive literature review resulted in identifying 79 DQIs for community centers. A three round Delphi evaluation approach was utilized to rate the importance of the DQIs through their relative importance index (RII) values. The assessment of the DQIs involved a diverse group of stakeholders including facilities managers, architects/engineers (A/Es), community centers’ staff, and regular visitors of community centers.

The majority of the established DQIs were considered to be either “Very Important” or “Important”.

The established DQIs can be utilized to identify best practices in the design of community centers and benchmark the performance of different community centers.

The design quality of community centers could significantly impact the community's quality of life and user experience. The development of DQIs provides for enhanced accountability and improved service delivery for the communities they serve. This enables community centers to be more effective, efficient, and responsive to the needs of the users they support.

The purpose of this paper is to draw on the stimulus-organism-response (SOR) framework to examine users’ knowledge sharing in online health communities (OHC).

Based on the 326 valid responses collected from a survey, structural equation modelling was employed to examine the research model.

The results indicated that both information quality and service quality affect trust in community, whereas both informational support and emotional support affect trust in other members. Both types of trust and privacy risk determine users’ sharing intention, which in turn affects sharing behaviour.

The results imply that service providers need to improve their community platforms and create a supportive climate in order to facilitate users’ trust and their knowledge sharing behaviour.

Previous studies have examined a few determinants of OHC user behaviour such as privacy concern, trust and motivations. However, they have seldom disclosed the internal decision process underlying users’ knowledge sharing. This research tries to fill the gap.