Hospitality Students' and Instructors' Perceptions of a Sense of Community and Learning in Online Classes: Do they see eye to eye?

Abstract

Through this pedagogical study, the authors sought to learn more about hospitality students' and instructors' perceptions of online learning and a sense of community in the online classroom environment. A validated instrument, the Classroom Community Scale (CCS) was used and as expected, scores on the overall CCS and its Connectedness subscale were not significantly different for students and instructors. However, scores on the Learning subscale differed between students and instructors. Explanations are given for the study results and suggestions for enhancing online learning community environments are provided.