TY - GEN
T1 - Where is community among online learners? Identity, efficacy and personal ties
AU - Sun, Na
AU - Rosson, Mary Beth
AU - Carroll, John M.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 Copyright is held by the owner/author(s).
Copyright:
Copyright 2020 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 2018/4/20
Y1 - 2018/4/20
N2 - Research questions about community among online learners are gaining importance as enrollments in online programs explode. However, what community means for this context has not been studied in a comprehensive way. We contribute a quantitative study of learners' feelings and behavior expectations about online community, adapting scales for sense of community (SOC) and developing an instrument to assess community collective efficacy (CCE). Our analysis of students' responses to these scales revealed two factors underlying SOC (shared identity and interpersonal friendship) and three factors underlying CCE (identity regulation, coordination and social support). We used these factors to discuss contrasting definitions of community (shared identity versus ego networks). Exploratory data analyses also revealed relationships to other student variables that begin to articulate roles and mechanisms for online students' felt community, and raise design implications about what we might do with and for the community structure.
AB - Research questions about community among online learners are gaining importance as enrollments in online programs explode. However, what community means for this context has not been studied in a comprehensive way. We contribute a quantitative study of learners' feelings and behavior expectations about online community, adapting scales for sense of community (SOC) and developing an instrument to assess community collective efficacy (CCE). Our analysis of students' responses to these scales revealed two factors underlying SOC (shared identity and interpersonal friendship) and three factors underlying CCE (identity regulation, coordination and social support). We used these factors to discuss contrasting definitions of community (shared identity versus ego networks). Exploratory data analyses also revealed relationships to other student variables that begin to articulate roles and mechanisms for online students' felt community, and raise design implications about what we might do with and for the community structure.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85046944911&partnerID=8YFLogxK
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U2 - 10.1145/3173574.3173866
DO - 10.1145/3173574.3173866
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85046944911
T3 - Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - Proceedings
BT - CHI 2018 - Extended Abstracts of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
PB - Association for Computing Machinery
T2 - 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI 2018
Y2 - 21 April 2018 through 26 April 2018
ER -