Students' Sense of Belonging in Online Classes

Abstract

This study explored graduate students' perceptions of their sense of belonging in online classes, their comfort in participating in online discussions, and their technology skills. Differences in these areas among three different age groups were studied. Data were gathered via an online survey. The results of the data analysis showed that students, regardless of age, felt a sense of belonging and felt comfortable communicating in the online environment. The data also revealed that older students reported feeling more comfortable interacting with their classmates and disagreeing with their classmates while still maintaining trust than their younger counterparts. Such findings inform online educators in designing classes that meet the needs of all learners.

The Brief Course Belonging Scale: Developing a Measure of Postsecondary Students' Course-Level Sense of Belonging Across Online and Face-To-Face Modalities

“…However, few studies have been conducted to investigate postsecondary students' sense of belonging at the course level and in the online learning context; even fewer are quantitative by design (see Decker & Beltran, 2016;Hewson, 2018). Instruments have been developed to quantify postsecondary students' sense of belonging (e.g., Slaten et al, 2018), but existing instruments were not developed with the intention of measuring the sense of belonging to other students in an online course.…”

“…However, a brief instrument that has been developed for and field-tested with postsecondary students taking courses and studying in an online environment is not available. Few studies address this distinct issue (e.g., Decker & Beltran, 2016;Hewson, 2018). More pressing, the existing instruments were not developed with the intention of measuring the sense of belonging in an online course or for use with postsecondary students completing their degree in a fully online program while living at a distance from the physical campus.…”

Comparing Student Outcomes in Online vs. In-person Sections of an On-campus Computer Science Course

“…In contrast, there exists a general consensus that students in online classes struggle with social interactions (student-to-student and student-to-instructor) [21,13,22,23,15] and experience a reduced sense of belonging [19,20,24,25]. Furthermore, academics agree that the sense of belonging varies as a function of students' characteristics and demographics [26,27,28,29,30]. Finally, there is a consensus among instructors that online education is potentially detrimental for students' performance and level of engagement in class [31,32,33].…”