ABSTRACT
Literature has identified best practices for instructors to engage online learners and support their learning. Building community on the course level is one of those practices. Yet course community building is often formal and restricted to membership and time. Instructors who design activities and assignments to develop comfort, trust, respect, and peer support among students may find that community dissipates at the end of their courses. Instructors and students must re-establish their sense of community each semester. Hence, course activities may be a necessary but insufficient component to foster sustained community, particularly in online degree programs. Practitioners, administrators, and faculty who teach in online programs should think broader and more inclusively about community formation over longer spans of time. This broader conceptualization is rarely considered in current literature.
