Infrequent Professional Contact. Researchers know that it is essential to feel that one is part of a scholarly community. Great research universities depend upon and promote the formation of such communities within and across many disciplines. They devote substantial resources to sustain participation in these communities, not just locally but nationally and internationally as well. The Internet has emerged as a vitally important force in this regard, enabling scholars to collaborate across great distances on projects that would be inconceivable without such technological support.
Community has an important impact on teaching as well.
The success of the UT Austin Computer Writing and Research Lab has been due in large part to the emergence of a genuine community of practice which has persisted for more than a decade. Researchers at the Center for Research on Information Technology in Organizations at the University of California, Irvine, report a strong correlation between frequency of professional contact and changes in teaching methods. But the same study found that few teachers had enough contact with their colleagues to make a major difference in their teaching. Secretary of Education Richard W. Riley's observation that K-12 teachers often work in isolation from their peers is borne out by many TX2K teachers, who report that collaboration is difficult because they lack common planning periods. But here too are unexpected new problems.