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

Learning was also operationalized by student self-reports, since the use of grades to operationalize learning may not always provide the best results. Students may already know the material when they enroll or the course may be structured so that grades are more related to class participation and timeliness of work rather than learning. The professional literature establishes the validity of the use of student self-reports of cognitive outcomes in educational research (Corrallo, 1994).

The Perceived Learning Questionnaire used in the present study was developed by Richmond, Gorham, and McCroskey (1987) and has been used in many studies related to learning. Participants were asked to respond to the following item: On a scale of 0 to 9, how much did you learn in this course, with 0 meaning you learned nothing and 9 meaning you learned more than in any other course you've had? In a study of 162 adult learners, test-retest reliability over a five-day period was .85 (McCroskey, Sallinen, Payer, Richmond, & Barraclough, 1996).

The Classroom Community Scale (CCS) was used to operationalize classroom community (Rovai, 2002). This instrument consisted of 20 self-report items, such as I feel isolated in this course and I feel that this course is like a family. Following each item was a five-point Likert scale of potential responses: strongly agree, agree, neutral, disagree, and strongly disagree. Study participants checked the place on the scale that best reflected their feelings about the item. The total possible scores for each of the two subscales of social community and learning community can range from 0 to 40, with higher scores reflecting stronger feelings of community.

Rovai (2002) provided evidence of both CCS validity and reliability. A factor analysis confirmed the two subscales of social community and learning community as latent dimensions of the classroom community construct. Cronbach's coefficient alpha for the full classroom community scale was .93, indicating excellent reliability. Additionally, the internal consistency estimates for the social community and learning community subscales were .92 and .87, respectively. In the present study, Cronbach's coefficient alpha for the full classroom community scale and the two subscales were .92, .90, and .84, respectively.

Procedures

Although no incentives were offered to students for participation in the study, the course professor mentioned the importance of participation in research activities that have the aim of improving learning. He also suggested that participation in a research study would provide the students of this research design course with valuable experiences for when they conduct research.

The perceived learning measure and the CCS were administered to participants via online surveys during the final three weeks of the semester so that students would have substantial exposure to their respective classes and to ensure the variables were measured at approximately the same time. Students were not aware of their final course grades when they completed the surveys. Total course points were obtained from the professor's online grade book after all grades were entered.