An Exploration Into the Importance of a Sense of Belonging for Online Learners (original) (raw)
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Compass: Journal of Learning and Teaching, 2021
A sense of belonging within higher education (HE) enhances educational engagement and attainment. The rapid shift to online provision has implications for reducing students' sense of belonging at university. We have previously shown that students consider belonging in HE to be important and that their personal sense of belonging was high. We also found that sense of belonging had elements of people and place: relationships with peers and staff were influential and the physical campus facilitated social relationships. In the first lockdown, we showed that sense of belonging in both staff and students at our large wideningparticipation London university was reduced. In this paper, we report on a continuing project to explore the impact of sustained provision of learning online, focusing on qualitative interviews carried out with forty-three students and twenty-three staff. Both groups identified advantages and disadvantages of online provision. Advantages included flexibility and accessibility, with savingsfinancial and timeowing to reduced commuting. However, both groups identified a negative impact on social relationships, student motivation and engagement. Future development of blended learning should be planned, supported and structured to optimise the benefits.
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This research seeks to animate the voices of postgraduate students registered on a UK distance learning online Masters in Education or Childhood & Youth programme. Such a critical exploration is timely given the HE landscape is premised on its openness and accessibility. Our study reports on 33 interviews with postgraduate students using photo elicitation and unstructured interviews. We prioritise the perspectives of students whose experiences do not replicate the success stories which generally epitomize representations of HE study, favouring instead the voices of students who interrupted or in some cases terminated their studies. Our aim is to better understand the PG students’ personal, professional, and academic learning trajectories.In reading the data we produced four “manifesto” statements crafted from a series of dialogues between ourselves as researchers, our colleagues, the online experiences of adult postgraduate students and our reading of literatures surrounding withdra...
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In a viral society in which the social being claims the ability to maintain distance and the socially desirable representation of the body, in particular the face, claims its concealment, the distance educational relationship represents a critical area that deserves to be highlighted in the research agendas. This study aims to explore the sense of belonging of 144 students who attend a distance learning university. For this purpose, an open-ended questionnaire was applied, previously disclosed in closed groups on social networks. The students' sense of belonging was analysed through the types of connections they maintain with the campus, course, peers and teachers. The analysis of the narratives expresses a great diversity, density of experiences and expectations in the connections and senses of belonging. Attributing great importance to teachers in the appropriation of knowledge, it is essentially with their peers - other students - that the connections and sense of belonging a...
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A sense of belonging (SoB) is a valued concept in campus-based learning, being firmly linked with improved student attainment, increased learners’ satisfaction and reduced attrition rates. Some researchers even assert that learners are unable to fulfil the goals of higher education without acquiring a SoB. This article recognises that SoB can help promote and consolidate learning and seeks to specify how tutors may nurture online learners’ SoB. An adapted version of the Community Inquiry Framework (CoIF) is used to frame specific suggestions for action. This revision of the well-known Framework focuses upon the overlapping intersections of the three Presences, entitled Influences: ‘Trusting’, ‘Meaning-making’ and ‘Deepening understanding’. For each Influence, guidance illustrated by examples is offered, leading to particular suggestions that concentrate upon the promotion of a sense of belonging as an important aspect of the online tutor’s facilitative activities.
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Aim/Purpose: This article seeks answers to the following: (1) What describes a ‘sense of belonging’, inclusiveness, and well-being for students? (2) Which aspects of blended learning, synchronous and asynchronous, promote students’ ‘sense of belonging’? and (3) What are the state-of-the-art best practices for creating inclusive curriculum design for blended learning? Background: For university students, experiencing a strong ‘sense of belonging’ with their learning communities is a reliable predictor of academic adjustment and program success. The disruption to usual teaching modes caused by the COVID pandemic has diminished opportunities for social engagement among students and their teachers, intensifying the need to encourage students’ belongingness as being ever more important. Methodology: This article surveys the literature, pre- and post-COVID, using two complementary search techniques: (1) a systematic scoping review, a top-down strategy, and (2) snowballing, a bottom-up app...
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Sense of belonging is an important topic in higher education. However, few studies have examined this important construct at the course level and in the online learning context; even fewer are quantitative by design. The aim of our study was to develop and evaluate a measure of sense of belonging that could be used across different postsecondary learning contexts. A psychometric investigation was conducted at a large, US southeastern university on data using the newly developed Brief Course Belonging Scale (BCBS). Results provide evidence for the unidimensional treatment of BCBS data across delivery context, convergent validity for BCBS scores as they relate positively to belonging at the university level, connectedness, and academic motivation, and discriminant validity for BCBS scores as they related minimally with loneliness. Differential item functioning was detected on one item, but this did not jeopardize score validity and reliability. Specific psychometric implications regar...
Belonging in Education: Lessons from the Belonging Project
This paper presents some preliminary findings from The Belonging Project – a longitudinal learning and teaching research project seeking to develop and define a new approach to student engagement. In this project, the concept of belonging is used as a tactic to engage both staff and students in the School of Media and Communication at RMIT University as part of the project’s aim to improve the student experience. This paper maps the way in which we use belonging – defined in relation to the educational experience – as a point of departure to achieve this outcome. Having established our definition of belonging and its purpose in our project, we then discuss some key results of focus groups with students, outlining the way in which students navigate issues of transition, interdisciplinarity, and notions of space and place, in their relationship to university and campus life.
Link: http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/iw6CfNA6hujM72Mn6uN6/full This article outlines a collaborative study between higher education institutions, which qualitatively explored the online learning experience for undergraduate and postgraduate students. The project adopted a narrative inquiry approach and encouraged students to ‘story’ their experiences of this virtual environment, providing a ‘snapshot’ of how learning is experienced by those undertaking online studies. This article explores what impacted upon students’ engagement in this environment and how different facets of this learning experience made a qualitative difference to how individuals enacted engagement. Drawing upon Pittaway’s Engagement Framework (2012), the article seeks to foreground student voice as the learners define their engagement in learning, the strategies they employed to assist this process and how engagement was enacted at an individual level. The students’ reflections presented in this article can be used to inform teaching and learning strategies designed to improve engagement in the online environment within the higher education sector.
A DESCRIPTIVE STUDY ON SENSE OF BELONGING AMONG DISTANCE LEARNERS AT MARA UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY
This paper discusses the sense of belonging of distance learners at MARA University of Technology. One hundred and eighty four students returned the complete self constructed questionnaire, which has been analyzed using descriptive statistics, t-test and Pearson Correlation. The result showed the distance learners indicated high level of sense of belonging. ‘Membership’ was found to be the most dominant aspect of sense of belonging as compared to other aspects. The middle-aged students showed the highest sense of belonging compared to other age group. The sense of belongings also was found different between genders. However, sense of belongings did not show any significant correlation with the students’ academic achievement. The Students’ program of studies also did not show any differences in the sense of belonging among students.
Sense of belonging in higher education students: An Australian longitudinal study from 2013 to 2019
Studies in Higher Education, 2023
Student sense of belonging is a current challenge to higher education providers, with consistently declining ratings in national surveys. For universities globally, this is a concern linked to student attrition, student satisfaction, and student success. Importantly, low sense of belonging is typically associated with non-traditional learners, and building strategies to solve this challenge is essential for institutions to build equitable learning environments. This study seeks to understand the causal factors that predict when a student will belong using longitudinal data. Using the Australian national student experience survey data (n = 1,159,768 undergraduate and postgraduate students between 2013 and 2019), this study examines the predictors of a sense of belonging testing the accuracy of four machine learning models. The findings indicate overall educational experience, connection to students outside of class, and support to settle were key predictors, with skill development and curriculum supports a lesser predictor of a sense of belonging. Interestingly, identity and individual differences ratings seemed to have less importance than student experience factors. Implications for higher education policy developers and curriculum writers are considered.