Jamison shares study about online students' perceptions of connectedness

As part of his doctoral research, Jamison who graduated from the University of Wyoming in 2018 with a Doctor of Education degree with a focus in Instructional Technology, studied the perception Chadron State College students enrolled in the Master of Business Administration (MBA) and Master of Science in Organizational Management (MSOM) programs have about connectedness to professors and peers. He shared these findings during a recent Graves Lecture.

“Compared to a correspondence-type course, we want the students in our online courses interacting fairly often, not just submitting assignments once a week. Even though they are remote and asynchronous, we’d like to build a sense of community,” Jamison said.

Only about four or five other studies have been conducted about the topic and most of them surveyed community college or undergraduate populations, according to Jamison.

“We’re kind of wading into new territory with this study,” Jamison said.

Regarding the overall results of his research, Jamison said the two CSC programs are similar to others showing students feel moderately connected to their professors.

“We’re tracking right along with other programs,” he said.

He distributed the Online Student Connectedness Survey developed by Jamison’s adviser and her colleague to 273 students and 115 responded. After data cleaning, there were 78 MBA responses and 22 MSOM responses.

The survey subjects were fairly evenly divided between men and women and ranged in age from 21 to 60. Jamison said the typical students in these two programs are in their late 20s or early 30s.

Sixty-five percent of the students who responded to the survey were in the second year of their two-year program.

“This makes sense because they are more comfortable with asking questions, discussing ideas, expressing opinions and introducing themselves in online courses,” Jamison said.

He measured perceptions of connectedness using four scales: Community, comfort, facilitation and collaboration/interaction. The overall mean was 3.63 on a 5.0 scale with the community sub score the lowest at a 2.68 mean.

Students indicated their instructors are responsive and promote interaction, but they would also like more frequent and timely feedback.

Jamison said responsiveness is a subjective term.

“For some students, an answer from the instructor the next day was fine. For others, waiting an hour for a response was too long,” Jamison said.

A few students indicated they would like synchronous or real-time classes, an option Jamison said is not practical due to varying work schedules and students enrolled in multiple time zones including some active military service members with intermittent internet access.

Several students indicated they didn’t care about a sense of community or connectedness. They just want to take the class, earn the degree and move on.

Jamison’s recommendations, based on his research, are for faculty to provide meaningful and timely feedback, engage students, create a communicative environment outside of class, set clear expectations of performance and communication, and try to involve distance learners in campus events through technology.