BLACKPOOL AND THE FYLDE COLLEGE SCHOLARSHIP REVIEW 2021
The Realm(s) of Belongingness (Online) Colette Mazzola-Randles
Abstract A contentious debate amongst educators, the implementation and impact of sense of belonging; this debate is typically defined in campus rich interactions, with little to no notion of online interactions. For many institutions and individual staff members, it is an incredible challenge and has made a significant impact on staff making meaningful, emotional connections with their students in an online learning environment. Creating emotional connections and a sense of belonging is perplexed and convoluted. This paper brings together a wide range of primary data in order to define and analyse the literature around this topic. This study used a phenomenological methodology with semi-structured interviews. The participants were from a variety of universities and curriculum areas in the United Kingdom and Ireland. The results of this study indicate that creating emotional connections and a sense of belonging is fundamental to teaching and learning online. In addition, the findings indicate that not all staff used visible interactions (via web cameras) to develop emotional connections online, the non-visible interactions were also noted as successful, as the asynchronous environment appeared to support students to become more confident and express themselves in a medium that they could not in a face-to-face environment (Suler, 2004; Wu et al., 2017; Tanis & Postmes, 2007; Scott, 1999). The recommendation is the importance of more robust, focused training to ensure teachers and students have knowledge of the benefits and drawbacks to emotional connections and sense of belonging, which should alleviate some of the implications and barriers to learning and teaching online, which are outlined in this paper.
Introduction A controversial debate amongst educators is the implementation and impact of a sense of belonging (Sense of belonging); this debate is typically defined in campus rich interactions, with little to no notion of online interactions. For many institutions and individual staff members, this has been an incredible challenge and made a significant impact on staff making meaningful, emotional connections with their students. A significant strength of digital learning is that individuals can learn at their own pace and prioritise the areas of a course they find more applicable to themselves. However, these same strengths can also present very real challenges, especially for new students who can feel unconfident about their academic skills and abilities and find immersion in the online educational space to be alien, even threatening - particularly when they are expected to post in online discussions and engage in online group work (Goodnow, 1993; Fulford and Zhang, 1993). In the digital environment, students can often miss out on interactions they might otherwise have had if they attended physically. Studies have shown that studying remotely can leave some students feeling isolated and lonely; emotions which significantly impact on their motivation to learn (Goodnow, 1993; Fulford and Zhang, 1993; Hausmann et al, 2009; Kearsley, 1995). This would appear to be why some Massive Open On-line
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