Well, it’s the New Year, which means time to make — and try to keep — a set of New Year’s resolutions. And tops among those resolutions is a perennial favorite: losing weight. But this year, the Internet may provide help to the 97% of dieters who say they will need some assistance to keep their resolution. A recent CNet article outlines how weight-loss Web sites help dieters keep the pounds off, saying “it might seem counterintuitive, but many dieters find that sitting in front of a computer and using the Internet helps them to keep those weight-loss resolutions.” Said one dieter, a subscriber of SparkPeople: “I find that I need that motivation from other people who are going through what I’m going through. People are writing you all the time… You learn how to do your portions. You learn how to make good choices with those foods and how to read labels, from the comfort of your own home.”

I’ve always thought that the highly-competitive weight-loss and sports club industries offer a valuable lesson to designers of (e)Learning environments: group support is a critical ingredient in helping individuals achieve their personal goals.

Research into weight loss programs shows that those that include a social dimension as part of the program are more effective than those utilizing individual or self-help approaches. For example, a study published in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology (1999, Vol. 67, No. 1, 132-138) found that friends who followed a weight loss program together lost more weight and were more likely to complete their diet program and maintain their weight loss. As reported in “Friends Who Diet Together Do Better Than Those Who Go Solo,” the study showed that among those who dieted alone, 76% completed their program and 24% maintained their weight loss during the four to ten month study period, compared with a group who dieted with the social support of friends where 95% completed their program and 66% maintained their weight loss in full.

Need more proof? Initial findings of a study conducted by the New York Obesity Research Center at St. Luke’s/Roosevelt Hospital and Columbia University found that 53% of the subjects in a community-based Weight Watchers group succeeded in losing five percent or more of their initial body weight compared with 15% of dieters in the self-help group. Weight Watchers was one of the pioneers in institutionalizing the social aspects of dieting by providing weekly meetings for individuals with shared dieting goals to share stories and give motivational support. But with the advent of the Internet, sites like SparkPeople are growing in popularity and offer a glimpse of how online communities can help people achieve their personal goals.

Beyond providing weight loss help and support, these dieting “communities of practice” are notable in how they foster extended friendships. Indeed, “Friends Who Diet Together Do Better Than Those Who Go Solo” reports that more than one-third (34%) of adult respondents in a Weight Watchers/TeleNation Survey on Friendship said they met most of their friends through activities in their immediate community.

While anyone subscribing to a socially grounded view of learning will not be surprised by these findings, designers of eLearning environments would do well to adopt these weight-loss industry best practices. The e-classroom should feature socially-rooted learning, support, and motivational activities as the basic fabric of the learning experience, and not as an afterthought (as exemplified by the ubiquitous bulletin board bolted onto a learning management system). In other words, as John Seely Brown advocates, eLearning environments should be built around a conversational paradigm.

But this view of learning communities extends beyond the e-classroom experience. The next generation virtual campus should feature “study buddies,” virtual “learning trainers,” and online “learning support groups” as basic components of the online learning community. The point is that eLearning will no longer be defined by a Learning Management System wherein students access professors’ powerpoint slides, watch talking head recorded videos, and take machine graded exams (and use bulletin boards to “communicate” with fellow students). Instead, eLearning environments will offer an authentic community (of practice) experience, a virtual mashup of Weight Watchers, SparkPeople, WebMD, Slashdot, Facebook, and MySpace. Maybe that’s the real “eLearning 2.0″ currently in vogue amongst the edublog community? I hope so, since it might may help more than a few people keep their New Year’s (learning) resolution!

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