Understanding Belonging in Fully Online Education Environments
Understanding Belonging in Fully Online Education Environments
Lauren Mottle - Organisational Development and Professional Learning
Project overview
This project supports the enhancement of practices around providing a high quality, accessible, inclusive, and rewarding student experience on fully online courses by exploring the student experience of online learning. Building on existing literatures highlighting the importance of a sense of belonging to student success, this research asks: how do fully online, postgraduate learners define belonging in online learning spaces? What are the opportunities and barriers to creating a sense of belonging in this context? What are the pedagogical implications in module design and delivery for fostering a sense of belonging for professional online learners?
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Key findings
The majority of online postgraduate students surveyed value and desire a sense of belonging, even where they have study motivations that may appear primarily transactional on the surface. However, while this sense of belonging has some overlapping themes from face-to-face contexts, the ways in which we create this reflect the unique contours of the online learning space. Specifically, online postgraduate students feel a sense of belonging and perceive they “matter” and when they have opportunities to overcome potential invisibility and anonymity in online spaces, defining belonging as being needed, valued by and visible to others.
- Online postgraduate students feel a sense of belonging when they perceive their digital presence to have value, primarily experienced when their contributions have a visible impact in moving learning forward.
What matters to me most is feeling that my presence is needed and makes a difference amongst my peers, not only because of my contributions but also because I am part of the programme.
– Survey participant
I suppose there’s an element of feeling like you’re valuable. And, you know, you’ve got contributions that would be missed if you weren’t there.
– Listening Room participant
Results suggest students experience a sense of belonging, community and connection in three main spaces:
- Formal academic spaces, such as webinars and discussion boards
- Personal spaces, that provide a foundation for belonging, community and connection before and beyond their study such as support from family and co-workers.
- And, informal academic spaces, replicating conversations in corridors, study spaces and coffee shops, where students get to know each other as individuals. This research suggests this is the most important locus for belonging. However, because we don’t have the equivalent of a corridor to chat in before sessions, we need to intentionally curate these moments for students and educators.
Other key findings include:
- Module leaders’/module delivery staff’s approach to module facilitation, both through asynchronous and synchronous methods, can have significant impacts on students’ sense of belonging.
I've had one of the academic team respond directly and make like a personalised recommendation for reading based on the things I've talked about…they've taken the time to engage with what I've written and suggest something specific to my potential interests.
– Listening Room participant
- Students view discussion boards and webinars as key opportunities to make connections but often don’t experience them in this way.
- Online postgraduate students seek a sense of connection and belonging with the University as an institution, even if they are studying from well beyond Leeds’ geographical location.
Implications for practice
Like online pedagogy generally, design and facilitation for online spaces is not a simple matter of transporting what works in face-to-face contexts to digital environments; therefore, staff delivering in online environments would benefit from support and guidance around best practice for online facilitation and how to most effectively manage both synchronous and asynchronous online spaces.
- Moments of belonging, community and connection can be effectively curated within via “the mundane” or “small moments”. Educators delivering in online environments should consider the small ways in which they can intentionally curate opportunities for students feel seen, valued and needed throughout online learning experiences to overcome the easy anonymity of online spaces.
In-person…you start to build a deeper connection by virtue of spending like physical time together those things like, you know, going to get coffee or lunch…or going to a library together and you don't have that in online study…conversation doesn't turn to the mundane - like what you watched on TV last night in all of those sorts of things where you can make, like, you know, the kind of non uni related stuff where friendship starts to grow.
– Listening Room participant
- A hidden curriculum exists around webinar and discussion board participation, assessment, and expectations around reading suggested literature that hinders student confidence and a sense of being valued. Staff delivering in online environments should surface and clarify these expectations wherever possible.
- Explorations into how to create online spaces for informal academic connections between students would provide an important avenue to enhance the sense of community and belonging for distance learning students.
- Delays to support through needed university services hinders students’ sense of belonging; investment in the resources that help students in their time of need would have an important and positive influence on their sense of being valued by the institution.
If you want to find out more details about this fellowship or what the next steps were upon completion please read the full snapshot or contact Lauren ([email protected])
Project start date: September 2023