Support Student Connection and Community

For students, being alone in a room all day without the opportunity to mingle with peers during or after class made digital learning during the pandemic even more challenging. One student shared his perspective, stating, "I feel like not having the in-person interactions just makes the learning…less effective for some reason. I'm not sure if it's atmospheric, if it's your other senses, [or] if it's having the human connection…because there is a disconnect when you see screens. There's been research showing that you don't view people as human when you're viewing them through a screen as you would in person; it's just something with mirror neurons. I think that might have a pretty significant effect on why my learning just feels like it is operating around 60 percent of normal capacity."

Opportunities for informal interactions, like bouncing ideas off of peers and learning from each other, are much more limited in online learning. This makes it difficult for students to foster meaningful relationships with classmates and faculty and create a sense of community and belonging. Even before the pandemic, students and faculty had difficulty creating connections online.¹

While creating connections online is challenging, it is important for increasing student engagement and creating a virtual sense of community. Research has shown that interpersonal interactions are even more important online due to the isolated nature of the modality.² And because it does not happen naturally in a virtual space, instructors must be intentional about designing a course that will create a digital learning community.³

There are different types of relationships that can help students stay engaged and improve the quality of an online class, including the student to instructor relationship and the student to student relationship. The student-instructor relationship consists of the quality of the relationship between students and instructors, which some researchers argue is the most important.⁴ This type of interaction can include communication via emails, discussion boards, lectures, and office hours. In one study, the strength of the student-instructor connection was most predictive of student course grades.⁵

Courses with high-interaction instructors had higher levels of student satisfaction, as high-interaction instructors frequently posted announcements, reminded students of upcoming deadlines, responded to students' inquiries in a timely manner, and frequently asked for and responded to student feedback. In one study, students reported feeling greater motivation and satisfaction with their class when the instructor requested feedback because they saw that their requests, needs, and opinions were important.⁶ This helped students feel connected to their professors as well.⁷

The student to student relationship is another important avenue for creating connection. Students told us that interaction with their peers helped them stay motivated and engaged with their courses. One student we spoke to said, “I found that whenever I was in the learning setting, I would always learn off other students in breakout rooms,” and they “kind of just let everyone talk it out together. And I found that to be a little less dry learning, which helps me stay motivated.” In addition to fostering connection and motivation, peer connections help students work together to learn and resolve questions.

Students in our focus groups said they really missed opportunities to interact with their peers. Breakout rooms helped create a stronger sense of connection for students. Beginning each synchronous session with exercises and icebreakers and scheduling virtual study groups were other ways to create a space for students to motivate each other and stay engaged with their courses.⁸ We even heard from a student whose favorite class was a Slack channel, after the pivot to online in the spring of 2020. That collaboration and messaging platform allowed for immediate feedback from the instructor and peers, allowing for the creation of strong peer relationships.

Fostering meaningful interpersonal relationships online increases motivation, engagement, and satisfaction and positively affects students’ grades.⁹ It makes courses “sticky” by connecting students to the content and their peers. The quality of interpersonal interactions has a significant impact on their grades and learning outcomes during the isolating experience of online learning.¹⁰