Sense of Community in a Distance Education Course

Abstract

One of the biggest challenges facing distance education programs is that of attrition. One potential way of reducing attrition is to foster a sense of community among students. Students who are emotionally and intellectually invested in each other and in their program are more likely to prosper in a multi-year distance program. This paper briefly explores those effects ascribed to community that we believe are crucial for distance education programs to succeed, and then focuses on a theoretical framework that seeks to define community known as the Psychological Sense of Community (PSOC). From this basis, we explore the communication between graduate students in a distance education cohort to see how well the PSOC can be applied to this environment.