Shanes Notebook

The field setting selected was an accredited online MBA program in a top-ranked business school. The program was designed for professionals who wished to continue their employment while earning their MBA. Full time, tenured faculty members chosen for the faculty pool from various departments of the business school to teach in the program. Some faculty members had more years of teaching experience than 1000 students in just a few years. The researchers believed that such a rapidly expanding program would best illustrate the complexities of a social system and provide rich context for participants’ perceptual change.

Both students and instructors agreed on the importance of group work in building learning communities. Although online instructors preferred to use virtual teams for reasons such as simulating the real business world and developing real skills, they did not intentionally structure any team interactions for community building purpose. However, retrospectively they thought they helped build a sense of community among the online learner by encouraging group learning experience through a shared task goal.

The present study revealed evidence of a significant relationship between sense of community and perceived learning engagement, perceived learning, and student satisfaction.

The present study indicated several limitations related to the social skills of online instructors. It is important for online MBA instructor to model community participation skills values, including turn-taking netiquette, thoughtful response to peer’s post and organization and facilitation of community events and chat. They should actively monitor the community discussion to answer questions, resolve conflicts, and guide discussion as needed. Normally such roles were absent in half of the online courses.