Xiaojing, Liu, Richard J. Magjuka, Curtis J. Bonk, and Seung-hee Lee. “Does Sense of Community Matter? An Examination of Participants’ Perception of Building Learning Communities in Online Courses.” Quarterly Review of Distance Education, 8.1 (2007): 9-24

In “Does Sense of Community Matter?” the authors explore the idea that a sense of community in online education classes is essential to the improvement of student participation and learning. Looking specifically at an online MBA program from a Midwestern University in which 28 faculty members and 20 students within the program were individually interviewed to determine how various teaching pedagogies and community building activities were carried out by faculty and received by students. The authors determined that though a sense of community created a stronger sense of learning among the students, a sense of community is not requisite to the students’ belief that they learn in the online environment. Xiaojing, Magjuka, Bonk and Lee address this study to active distance education faculty in order to aid in their comprehension of the necessity of community construction in their online classes. The purpose of the article is to present the fact that while communities may make students feel more comfortable with the online learning environment, they are not essential to furthering the education of students enrolled in a distance learning course.