Online Professional and Academic Learning Communities: Faculty Perspectives

Learning communities provide a way to envision e-learning classrooms. The connection between individuals and their learning community is a hallmark of a graduate academic institution (Beattie, 2002; Rovai, 2003; Thurston, 2005). Weak or no connection to the university community has ramifications for learner retention and referrals of prospective students (Glazer & Wanstreet, 2011). Therefore, every aspect of the university needs to foster connectedness as a way to build community (Bibeau, 2001). Connectedness is the degree to which people see themselves in relation to other people (R. M. Lee & Robbins, 1995) and organizations (Glazer & Wanstreet, 2011). Building those relationships through interactions between and among people is what defines community (Riel, 1996).

Many community-building strategies rely primarily on the efforts of course instructors. These include using task-based interactions to promote completion of assignments and socioemotional interactions to facilitate relationships (Rovai, 2001), fostering a positive and collaborative culture (Wilson, Ludwig-Hardman, Thornam, & Dunlap, 2004), using authentic assessment practices (Lee, Carter-Wells, Glaeser, Ivers, & Street, 2006), and mentoring and coaching learners to achieve group goals and promote learning (Gunawardena et al., 2006; Stein, Wanstreet, Slagle, Trinko, & Lutz, 2013). Few strategies call for systematic community building at “beyondclass” levels (Liu, Magjuka, Bonk, & Lee, 2009, p. 540).

While the literature emphasizes the importance of building online learning communities to support worthwhile learning experiences (Garrison, Anderson, & Archer, 2000), foster shared involvement (Palloff & Pratt, 2003), help learners develop online identities (Cousin & Deepwell, 2005), support knowledge construction (Moisey, Neu, & Cleveland-Innes, 2008), and become collectively wise (Gunawardena et al., 2006), the perspective of those faculty involved in building learning communities is lacking (O'Neill, Scott, & Conboy, 2011). In light of the gap in faculty perspectives related to building online learning communities, this study investigated the following questions: What does it mean to create a community of learners at a virtual university? What is the culture of community for learning at this university? What is the role of faculty in creating a learning community? How do you project teaching, learning, and social presence to build community?

A qualitative descriptive approach was used in this study because it is compatible with focus groups (Webb & Kevern, 2001) and sought to produce a descriptive portrayal of group perceptions (Sandelowski, 2000), feelings, and thoughts about learning communities through predetermined, open-ended questions (Krueger, 1994). Data to answer the research questions were gathered through an asynchronous online focus group that spanned 4 weeks. The online focus group format was used because it encouraged the development of a shared understanding of the concept of community and encouraged the exploration of the concept by the participants.

Online focus groups have been shown to promote group interaction over multiple weeks (Kenny, 2005), provide a convenient way for participants to join group discussions (Moloney, Dietrich, Strickland, & Myerburg, 2003), and allow more time for reflection than face-to-face focus groups (Tates et al., 2009). From the perspective of the researcher, online focus groups automatically and accurately capture the discussion data without the need for transcription (Moloney et al., 2003) and are theoretically sound (Turney & Pocknee, 2005).

All full-time and adjunct faculty at a large for-profit virtual university comprised the population for the study. After permission and approval was obtained from the university's office of institutional research and the institutional review board, an e-mail invitation was sent to all faculty (N = 1,551). Of the 100 faculty who responded, 25 were randomly selected to be in the study. Of those, 18 participated, 10 of whom were female. Adjuncts represented approximately 85% of the sample. The sample is representative of the population in terms of gender and full-time/adjunct percentage.

The online focus group was conducted on a discussion board in the university's course management system. Turney and Pocknee (2005) recommend using university learning management systems to conduct online focus groups to take advantage of existing, familiar infrastructure and university security and privacy procedures. A course shell for the 4-week focus group discussion was arranged, and all participants were enrolled. For ease of access, the focus group appeared on faculty home pages as a course lasting 4 weeks. The sessions were conducted in the discussion forum, and each week a new question appeared to prompt discussion. The participants stayed with the discussion for the week, but some continued in the previous week. Most faculty participated in the discussion two or more times per week. Names were not associated with postings, thus ensuring anonymity of respondents, unless they elected to self-identify.

The role of the researchers was to monitor the discussion and post only as needed to minimize misunderstandings (Moloney et al., 2003) and keep the discussion on target. The researchers were not otherwise members of the group responding to the weekly questions.

Following the focus group, two researchers carefully read all discussion transcripts independently and organized the data according to significant statements (Creswell, 2009). Codes were generated from which a description of themes emerged (Creswell, 2009). The researchers discussed the themes and came to consensus.

Three themes that reflect faculty perspectives of academic and professional community creation emerged from an analysis of the focus group transcripts. The themes relate to responsibility for community building at the institutional, instructor, and learner levels.

Faculty perceived that the institution was responsible for creating a culture that fosters learning in academic and professional communities. Institutional efforts to facilitate academic learning communities include student support services and the course management system, which was seen as creating a foundation for community where learners and faculty come together “to communicate, share, and build knowledge” as well as creating a “shared purpose by the way we structure assignments.” As one respondent noted,

In addition to the technology that facilitates interaction and relationship-building, student support services were perceived as foundational to creating a learning community. As one respondent noted,

A number of studies tie institutional online support to learner satisfaction (Beaudoin, Kurtz, & Eden, 2009; Yukselturk & Yildirim, 2008), learner persistence (Joo, Joung, & Sim, 2011), and faculty motivation (Orr, Williams, & Pennington, 2009), but no study was found that suggests a relationship between institutional support and learning community creation.

Although the institution was praised for its efforts to promote academic learning communities, faculty reported shortcomings regarding institutional efforts to promote a professional learning community, particularly among adjuncts. Characterizing themselves as “commodities” or “an appendage,” adjuncts in this study “don't feel community because it's not encouraged.” As one respondent noted,

Just as community building is considered a strategy to combat isolation among learners (Bibeau, 2001; Haythornthwaite, Kazmer, Robins, & Shoemaker, 2000), lack of community contributes to feelings of isolation among adjuncts, as one respondent noted:

Devoting inadequate attention to faculty learning communities can have a detrimental effect on graduates. As Romsdahl and Hill (2012) suggest, student participation in online learning communities has implications for the local communities in which graduates live and work in terms of interest in and collaboration around regional issues. One respondent echoed those findings:

Faculty perceived that community is developed through respectful interactions that promote learning. One faculty member noted that an “open, respectful environment for students to learn from each other [creates] a really great experience.” Group discussion and assignments helped learners develop shared values and norms, which led “more readily to self-disclosure and meaningful interaction.”

Faculty see themselves as taking on various roles in learning communities. Respondents noted:

One respondent perceived community building as a joint responsibility: “The institution and faculty can work together to create community. I think that online learning can help to create a culture of community if some intentional thought is put into the topic, and if instructors are provided with structures to facilitate the creation of such a culture.”

Faculty perceived that learners had a role to play in building a learning community but that it may compete with individual interests. One faculty member noted the “natural distance” in online environments that may make the student's individual needs “more central than the needs to be involved and interactive in class.” Another respondent noted the challenge of building community without buy-in from all learners:

Other faculty perceived that learners had a role in fostering trust and interdependence among themselves and between learners and faculty. Their comments cite individual accountability and being academically ready to participate in a learning community as other factors that learners contributed to community building:

A similar finding related to positive interdependence and individual accountability was reported by O'Neill et al. (2011) in their Delphi study of faculty perceptions of collaborative online learning. However, faculty in the O'Neill et al. study perceived interdependence to be among the learners only and not between themselves as faculty and the learners.

One respondent observed that the university “has a diverse group of learners with a wide variation in academic readiness.” Learners need to be prepared academically as a “basic standard that needs to be addressed” in order for them to navigate learning communities. Academic readiness can be reinforced through tasks that promote positive interdependence via group roles and responsibilities; interaction related to task completion; individual accountability; social skills, including trust-building, communication, conflict-management, decision-making, and leadership skills; and group processing, or assessing the efficacy of the group (Strods, 2010).

The faculty functioning in a dynamic online community saw themselves as actively working to create an academic community of scholars in their courses but noted that it is often a difficult task. At the same time, they expressed concern about feeling part of the professional community of faculty and voiced concerns about the culture in which this occurs. This concern was primarily related to being adjunct faculty and not feeling as though they are part of a greater whole. This feeling of being disconnected from other faculty was seen as being outside of what occurs in individual courses.

Creating an academic learning community was perceived as encompassing the development of norms, having a shared purpose and shared values, and scaffolding knowledge. The faculty see themselves as taking on various roles to facilitate community, including being a facilitator, teacher, mentor, and guide; modeling professional behavior; and sharing experience. The faculty appear to be defining their role in terms of teaching presence as articulated by Anderson, Rourke, Archer, and Garrison (2001), which is a “significant determinant of … sense of community” (Garrison & Arbaugh, 2007, p. 163). Faculty perceive their role as significant to the building of community and of encouraging the learning of the students through the establishment of a community of learners. This supports Bernard et al.'s (2009) conclusion that designing interaction with the content, instructor, or peers into a course has a positive effect on student learning. The faculty saw themselves as actively working to create a community of scholars in their courses.

Both the institution and the faculty are focused on creating community among learners, but this study suggests that they have largely overlooked the importance of creating community among faculty. Anderson (2003) calls for teacher-teacher interaction to collaborate on research and evaluation and to support professional development and knowledgebuilding opportunities for instructors. In this study, adjunct instructors in particular expressed concern about not feeling part of the professional community of faculty and about the implications of that “essential omission” for learners in terms of their subsequent communities and professions. It should be noted that after this study was completed, the university made significant changes in the structure of the faculty. These changes mainly affected the number and role of full-time faculty. Community among faculty was not addressed by the changes. The university's strides in technology and student services that facilitate academic learning communities may be counterbalanced by this lack of attention to fostering professional communities of faculty.