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Feeling part of a community of learners has been shown to foster students' engagement and sense of belonging, leading to higher retention and achievement of learning outcomes. The pivot to online teaching caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has prompted a reappraisal of all aspects of the student experience, including students' capacity and opportunity to engage in meaningful learning communities online. There has been some emergent literature which considers how to facilitate online learning communities in the emergency remote teaching context prompted by COVID-19. However, there is a notable lack of literature which considers how learning communities are defined, understood, and negotiated by students in this unique teaching context. Given how students' perceptions of learning communities contributes to Higher Education policy (e.g. through the National Student Survey), this is important to understand. In the present study (N = 309), we qualitatively investigated students' understanding and definition of the term 'learning community' during a time of emergency pivot to online teaching and learning. A reflexive thematic analysis of students' first-hand responses generated three dominant themes: 'Feeling connected: Bridging the gap whilst physically distanced', 'Feeling included: Visible and valued', and 'Feeling together: Mutuality and the shared experience'. We discuss the implications for these conceptualisations of an online learning community and suggest ways forward for Higher Education pedagogy., Author(s): Lucy Prodgers [sup.1] , Elizabeth Travis [sup.1] , Madeleine Pownall [sup.1] Author Affiliations: (1) grid.9909.9, 0000 0004 1936 8403, School of Psychology, University of Leeds, , 4 Lifton Place, [...]

Online learning is often associated with the alone together paradox that suggests that online students are constantly connected to one another yet feel more alone due to a lack of real social connection. While research has approached this issue from an environmental perspective, some scholars have recently suggested that aspects of online students' complex ecologies, beyond the online program, may also influence the degree students engage socially. This phenomenological study explores the experiences of 10 students enrolled in an online doctoral program in education. In-depth interviews were conducted to discuss how various ecological systems affect students' ability to socially connect in the online program, revealing students reporting feeling apart, but together, rather than alone together. This study encourages online doctoral programs and researchers to take an ecological approach, as opposed to an environmental one, in order to construct a more thorough understanding of the online doctoral student experience., Author(s): Keith Graham [sup.1] , Ambyr Rios [sup.2] , Radhika Viruru [sup.2] Author Affiliations: (1) grid.412090.e, 0000 0001 2158 7670, National Taiwan Normal University, , Taipei, Taiwan (2) grid.264756.4, 0000 [...]

This study investigated undergraduate students' study habits and learning experiences in an online lifespan motor development course. The study was based on the theory of transactional distance. Seven undergraduate physical education majors enrolled in an online course at a Midwestern public university in the United States participated in this study. Data were collected via face-to-face interviews, e-mail communication, bulletin board discussion logs, computer-based quizzes and exams, and a research writing project. Four interrelated themes underpinned by the theory of transactional distance emerged. Data were interpreted through a constant comparative method including (a) transition from experiential to visual learning, (b) how to use a textbook in an online course, (c) computer-based test anxieties, and (d) social justice and diversity sensitivity. The ideal online course puts a set of student tasks (i.e., lectures, projects, and assignments) at the center of the course to constitute the learning experiences of students either independently or collaboratively. Although the study was conducted in the context of the lifespan motor development online course, the recommendations can be applied across different content areas in the kinesiology field., In the past decade, online learning has grown in popularity as a form of education being embraced at undergraduate and graduate levels. In the United States, approximately 5.5 million students [...]

Team-based projects are widely used in both traditional face-to-face and online programs in higher education. To date, the teamwork experiences of students in each modality have been documented primarily through evaluative research conducted over short spans of time and limited by a priori frameworks. The literature also reflects a lack of agreement about what constitutes the phenomenon of teamwork in each modality. In order to address these limitations, we conducted a phenomenological study examining the lived experiences of teamwork among students in both face-to-face and online MBA programs in Iran. Our analysis revealed striking commonalities in the experiences of both groups, including a shared desire for effective leadership to alleviate the problem of free riders, as well as substantial time and effort invested in retaining reliable teammates from one team project to another. In other respects, face-to-face and online students' experience differed strongly. For example, while face-to-face participants pursued teammates with similar beliefs about how teamwork should be accomplished, online participants found themselves pre-occupied with staying connected with their teammates and struggled to establish common communication channels with each and every team member. Overall, our findings suggest that while training and support for student teamwork can partly build on the shared needs among students in both modalities, the nature of the experience in each modality may be so different in vital respects that engaging in one mode of teamwork does not necessarily prepare students to participate well in the other mode. Other implications and limitations of the research are discussed., Author(s): Marzieh Saghafian [sup.1] , D. Kevin O'Neill [sup.2] Author Affiliations: (1) Schulich School of Business, York University, 0000 0004 1936 9430, grid.21100.32, , Toronto, Canada (2) Faculty of Education, [...]

Abstract Online courses seem to be an attractive option for at-risk students juggling work schedules, family responsibilities and time constraints. Yet, are at-risk students able to navigate the online format, [...]