Hi Mark and Paula,

I enjoyed reading your thoughts on what makes a graduate student feel more a part of the community.  I would agree with all of your assessments and your thoughts on this issue.  It is always a challenge to help online students at any level to feel a part of the community.  I work as a full time online faculty member here at GCU and I have seen several key factors that you mentioned that have helped with this issue.  The first part of that process is making a simple phone call to introduce yourself to the student and go over expectations of the course.  This has been an amazing tool to help the student feel more a part of the university.

Other key components that have made the biggest impact have been getting very meaningful and very quick feedback to assignments and questions that the students have about any issues.  This makes them feel very important and they feel like they are a big part of the community as well.  One aspect of being an adjunct professor that most adjuncts do not realize is the feedback from grading.  In the first week this is especially important because a student might get the feedback from the first assignment on the last day of the second week of class.  This means that the student does not know what you expect of them and they have written their second week's paper without any feedback.  That also means that they do not know how you grade or what to expect until they actually begin their third week of class.  That is very hard on a student and it can cause tremendous strain on feeling a part of the community.

Another key component has been to have good discussion forum responses to all students each week.  This has made the student feel much more a part of the university and they can express their thoughts and feelings in a professional way.  I think this is a huge component that most adjunct professors miss out on because they do not have the time to give to this area as much as they would like to.  

Being easily accessible by phone or email has made my students feel more connected because I answer their questions as quickly and as promptly as possible.  This makes them have a better understanding and it also makes them feel more involved and a part of the community.  

Take care and keep up the great efforts.  

Matt

Hello Mark and Paula:

I enjoyed reading your paper! As an online instructor for 13 years myself, I could relate to much of what you described from an anecdotal perspective. Therefore, it was very relevant and interesting to see the data arranged in a more scientific way.

My top of mind thoughts for this paper is that the Likert scale might be interpreted using a non-parametric test given the fact that the distance between the scale points is not normally distributed. In other words, a "strongly agree" is much stronger than "agree." One other concomitant consideration is that, from my background as a practitioner in the business community, we often explored the relationship between marginal effort and output. In other words, the "effort" required to produce a "strongly agree" might be 3X of "agree." There is an implication, then, that this marginal effort is related to a similar increase in "results" - in this case, "connectedness" and perhaps "retention/engagement." In other words, is earning a "5" as one's mode on the Likert indeed advantageous to a "4," given the 3X effort? We can believe that the answer is "yes," but it would be great to know the "why." Also, an off quadrant analysis of the highly dissatisfied, and consequently unengaged learners, might also reveal what can be done to alleviate the generation of outliers in the classroom that may indeed disrupt the learning environment.

Another takeaway for me, as an instructor who enjoys innovation in the online classroom, is that the ordinal rank of pedagogical tactics that produced engaged learners could also be a proxy for the tenure of these tactics in the classroom. For sure, email and DQ boards have been around a long time, and consequently rank high in the student's mind. Conversely, "Wikis" are quite new, and have not been adopted my many instructors, nor are as understood as well by many learners - and consequently rank quite low. I would imagine, from anecdotal observations, that if an instructor was an early adopter of these teaching tactics, then there students would also be more likely to adopt and accept them.

My final takeaway is that, as scholar-practitioners, many students will be able to take away from this sense of community the ability to better collaborate on a global basis. For sure, many of the same attributes of community emerge when working with others in the workplace.

For sure, your work has produced many interesting areas of thought and discussion. Keep up the good work!

Daniel J. Smith, MA, MBA, PhD

It was interesting to read the survey questions and results of your study. Many of the issues you cite are ones that I have tried to work on with my learners. I like to actively participate in the DQs by acknowledging each post and try not to be too intrusive in the conversations between students. Sometimes, just asking the learner to expand on a post, or to add an example from their own experiences, can result in further discussion with others sharing their own experiences. I agree that prompt responses to emails and phone calls can be invaluable in making the learners feel part of the class and that the instructor is interested in their success.

I truly enjoyed reading this submission!  It is a subject of much interest to me, probably ever since I took my first online class.  Research must continue until we see no further comments such as the one from the survey participant exclaiming, "I feel very alone in this program!" Best practices must continually evolve in order to assuage this isolated feeling amongst online learners. 

It was interesting to read Quinlan's 2007 research regarding telephone calls from professors.  I took a distance education course in which the professor called the students prior to the course's start date.  This outreach most definitely impacted me positively. 

Another notable piece of information was the first author's turnaround time for grading.  That's quite laudable.  I work feverishly to grade quickly, but cannot beat 24-hour return.  Most students would appreciate that effort.

Thank you for this submission and the interesting perspectives shared.  Forgive me for being of the mind that traditional presentation with this type of information counts.  I prefer the formal title page presentation.  The multiple fonts are somewhat distracting for me from the academic/professional approach.  This could be my cue to move into the future in relation to presentation of information.

As with all learning, students need to feel as if the teacher likes him/her and is vested in his/her learning.  The same is the case with online learning. 

It is good to see the research reinforcing GCU strategies for creating community among learners.  The role of the instructor cannot be underplayed.  As with many who do not like the automated voice answering services and wish to talk with a live person, so to do learners enjoy hearing from the instructor.  I think it is important for research to mine this information to provide a balance between technology and personal interaction.

Finally, please also allow me to mention writing errors within this submission that were somewhat distracting.  (...instructors, which...) (I would also encourage monitoring placement and selection of punctuation.) (I encourage placing the Reference page on a separate page than the end of the submission text.)  It could be that I am too picky! 

Overall, I enjoyed reading this submission and look forward to reflecting upon effective ways to help learners feel connected to courses that I facilitate.  Thank you!

Rae Thompson

This is interesting since students uniformly trust each other, have faith in peer interactions and feel support -within peers. The relationship though ends there, the instructor and moreover the institution continually fails to provide a solid feeling of trust or bond with the student. I can see this as a large issue than simply connection and learning, but business. Most of these higher educational institutions are for-profit. It amazes me that there has not been more research done such as your study AND more attention has not been placed on studies such as this one. It would appear to me that creating and establishing that bond would help hold not only retain, but 'hold' that student for not only one degree but perhaps longer. The student might wish to continue studies, encourage friends, and essentially be the walking billboard businesses rely on. Reminds me of the iphone ad, if you don't have the student, well you don't have the student. Great ideas!

Gentlemen,

You have come up with very interesting truths in all learning environments, but they are especially true in the online learning environment. Creating a sense of community is definitely key to keeping students in school and actively involved. Sometimes we forget that this is a major concern online as well. Sometimes there is a false sense of security in thinking, "If we keep the pace going fast enough in the online learning community, then the students don't have time to feel as if they need a true community". After working both on ground and online, I can tell you I have sense this same lack of community occurring on both types of campus. Good job on revealing an important area of research for the future.