Relationships Among Graduate Students’ Sense of Community, Activity, and Grades in an Online Learning Environment
Keywords:
graduate teacher education, online learning environmentAbstract
This study explored the relationship between graduate students’ sense of community in online learning environments and their academic behaviors (online activity and final grades). Sense of community refers to social (connectedness) and feedback (learning) aspects of the environment that can potentially promote engagement and academic performance. Using a cross-sectional survey design among graduate students in an online course (N = 96), the authors collected self-reported data on students’ sense of community and attempted to link it to online course engagement data (LMS activity) and academic performance (final course grades). Multiple regression analyses from this study provided two key findings. Sense of community was not directly associated with grades when it was measured only as connectedness or learning. However, the learning sense of community subscale was indirectly related to final grades through online activity; it was associated with higher levels of online course activity, which, in turn, were related to higher academic performance.
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