Development of a scale of Sense of Community in university online courses

Abstract

Creating a sense of community in online classes contributes to student retention and to their overall satisfaction with the course \nitself. This study aimed to develop a scale of sense of community of students attending online university courses. A series of ordinal \nexploratory factor analyses were conducted on data obtained from 839 students enrolled in Italian universities. Using an item analysis \nmethod, we were able to select the 36 most valid items from an original set of 60 items we had previously defined. These items are \ndistributed across three related factors measuring membership, influence, and fulfillment of needs. This factorial structure replicates \nthe McMillan and Chavis’s model of sense of community, upon the basis of which this scale was developed. The three \nfactors presented good ordinal alpha and adequate convergent/divergent validity coefficients. The scale represents an efficient \ntool for the design, monitoring, and evaluation of online courses.