Sense of Community in an Asynchronous Online Degree Program

Students' sense of community within educational environments can have a significant impact on the learning outcomes of those students. Fostering this type of connection can be challenging for online degree programs, particularly for asynchronous programs. Recognizing the potential benefits and improved student outcomes to be gained from a stronger student sense of community, we are conducting a survey study in an online Masters in Computer Science program in order to evaluate the current sense of community for the students and discover what factors could be leveraged to strengthen it. Preliminary pilot results indicate a lower sense of connectedness than learning in the program, which could lead one to assume a need to increase connectedness. However, these same preliminary results also suggest the importance of future work assessing student perspectives on the desirability of increasing connectedness.