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

Bloom, Linda, John Sherlock, and Pam Vesely. “Key Elements of Building Online Community: Comparing Faculty and Student Perceptions.” MERLOT Journal of Online Learning and Teaching. 3.3. September 2007. http://jolt.merlot.org/vol3no3/vesely.htm.
(23 September 2009)

This article examines community and community-building in the online classroom. It examines the ways in which community is essential to the learning process by reviewing literature associated with this topic and pointing to the success of non-classroom online communities in terms of the levels at which participants may be engaged with the communities. Additionally, this article discusses and presents the findings of a study by the authors in which fourteen online university classes were examined in terms of community and community-building. The article ends with recommendations by the authors for instructors, administrators, and others who may be interested in this topic.

This article is incredibly helpful in terms of my goals for my project. The literature review may be one of the most useful parts. Here, the authors foreground such information as the number of public and private colleges and universities that offer online courses, as well as the numbers related to dropout rates amongst online learners (“often 10-20 % higher than in traditional courses”). Most of this, as the authors point out, can be attributed to a feeling of isolation amongst learners, which further points to the significance of discussing and researching community in the online classroom. The study conducted by the authors of this article centers on the challenges instructors face when attempting to build community in the online classroom and the problems experienced by students as a result of this: "The present study included both students and instructors and asked whether establishing community in the online classroom was harder or easier and why. Additionally, while many of the variables that impact the development of community in the online classroom have been previously reported, this study sought to identify and compare student and instructor perceptions of what is truly most important" (4).

The findings and conclusions of this study were presented in an effective and clear manner, and give a good idea of the traits that both students and teachers rank as most important in an online classroom in terms of community. I think it would be interesting, in light of research on the ways women function in online communities, to conduct a similar study and breaking down the results in terms of gender.