RSA3: Key Elements of Building Online Community: Comparing Faculty
and Student Perceptions

Key Elements of Building Online Community: Comparing Faculty
and Student Perceptions

In the past decade online learning has vastly grown in popularity. However researchers are still hoping to decipher the key to what makes online learning a true success for all students. What most are discovering is that online classes are missing something that every face-to-face class has. A sense of community. “In distance education, attention needs to be paid to the developing sense of community within the group of participants in order for the learning process to be successful” (Palloff & Pratt, 2007). When community has not been established, the online forum can create a feeling of isolation for the students participating. Students need to know that there are in fact other students and a professor that have a real presence in the class. How then is this sense of community created within an online class? The process cannot just happen; it must be facilitated (Palloff & Pratt, 2007).

Pam Vesely, Lisa Bloom and John Sherlock were interested in learning more about building community in an online setting. They conducted a survey in which they asked both higher education students and their instructors about the challenges and elements necessary for an online class. What was most interesting about the study was that the instructors and students had differing thoughts regarding the most important element of online learning. “Students and instructors both agreed that instructor modeling was important in building online community. However, when analyzing the responses for the rank order question, students ranked instructor modeling as the most important factor in building community in online courses, and instructors ranked it as fourth in importance” (Vesely, Bloom & Sherlock, 2007). It is clear that students feel in order to build community within their online course, there needs to be modeling and facilitation from the instructor.

Both Palloff & Pratt and Vesely, Bloom & Sherlock seem to agree that it is of extreme importance to build community in an online course. Instructors can establish guidelines for the course and make it more likely for students to become engaged and begin the community building process (Palloff & Pratt, 2007). Because it is so easy for students to become silent or disappear in an online class, the community building process needs to begin immediately and continue throughout the length of the course.

References

Palloff, R.M., & Pratt, K. (2007). Building online learning communities: Effective strategies for the virtual classroom. San Francisco: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Vesely, P., Bloom, L. & Sherlock, J. (2007). Key elements of building online community: comparing faculty and student perceptions. Accessed at http://jolt.merlot.org/vol3no3/vesely.htm on November 23, 2012.