Learning and Sense of Community: A Comparative Analysis of African American and Caucasian Online Graduate Students

Journal of Negro Education, The, Winter 2005 by Rovai, Alfred P, Gallien, Louis B Jr

The values of Kwanzaa suggest that graduate programs involving African Americans should be designed around cohort groups whose members are in geographical proximity to each other, whenever possible, and include collaborative group work. Such cohorts facilitate the construction of knowledge in a communal setting that is valued by African Americans (Flannery, 1995). Additionally, students should be encouraged to form study groups outside the virtual classroom environment. This allows students to interact with each other on both formal and informal levels outside the formal course structure. The emphasis should be on interactivity and mutual support for each other and not on competition and independent learning. Learning and sense of community can be strengthened by the establishment of such mini learning communities.

STATEMENT OF PURPOSE

The purpose of the present study was to examine possible impediments to learning and sense of community among African American online graduate students. The research examined how learning and sense of community differed between African American and Caucasian students in two sections of an ALN graduate course. One section was taught entirely online and consisted of a mix of African American and Caucasian students in which African American students were in the minority. The second section consisted of only African American students and was taught using a blend of online and face-to-face learning. The research hypothesis was that the African American-only section of the course would achieve higher levels of learning and stronger sense of community than the African American students in the mixed-race section. This hypothesis was based on the facts that students in the African American-only section of the course were in the company of only African American students and consequently should have a more positive sense of self (Horvat & Lewis, 2003), and they possessed greater opportunities for communal learning activities based on the geographical proximity of the students to each other and on the nature of the added face-to-face sessions (Flannery, 1995).

METHOD

Participants

The study consisted of 97 graduate students enrolled in an online graduate education program. The volunteer rate for this study was 97.40%. The overall sample was predominately female, consisting of 86 (88.66%) females and 11 (11.34%) males. A total of 50 (51.55%) of the participants were African American and 47 (48.45%) were Caucasian. The mean age of participants was 42.51 (SD = 7.90). All participants were employed in the field of education as either a teacher or administrator with the substantial majority working in the K-12 school environment.

Setting

Two sections of an online graduate course in educational research design were sampled in the present study. The goals of this course were for students to develop: (a) an appreciation for the usefulness of research in studying social phenomena; (b) a sophisticated understanding of quantitative and qualitative research; and (c) the skills necessary to plan, conduct, and critique educational research. The course was one semester (i.e., 16-weeks) in duration, and all the classes were taught by the same male Caucasian professor via the Internet using the Blackboard(SM) e-learning system.