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

KEYWORDS:

• Factorial structure
• ordinal factor analysis
• ordinal alpha
• sense of community
• online course

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Ethical standards

This study was performed in accordance with the ethical standards laid down in the 2013 Fortaleza version of the Declaration of Helsinki, a statement of ethical principles developed by the World Medical Association (2017) to provide guidance in research involving human subjects.

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported in part with funding from the University of Valle d’Aosta.

Notes on contributors

Giulia Balboni

Giulia Balboni, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Psychometrics, University of Perugia (Italy). Her research areas are development of tests and investigation of psychometric properties with a special interest on sense of community, individual and familial sociocultural level, and adaptive behavior and quality of life.

Vittore Perrucci

Vittore Perrucci, Ph.D., is a researcher of Developmental and Educational Psychology at University of Valle d’Aosta (Italy). Since 2012 he is a Scientific Committee Member of the International Psychological Applications Conference and Trends. His research interests concern learning skills and processes in the fields of cognitive development and education.

Stefano Cacciamani

Stefano Cacciamani, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Educational Psychology, University of Valle d’Aosta (Italy), and the University Delegate for E-learning. He is Co-Director of Qwerty, journal of technology, culture and education. His research interests concern knowledge building supported by digital technologies, and sense of community in online courses.

Bruno D. Zumbo

Bruno D. Zumbo, Ph.D., is currently Professor and Distinguished University Scholar, and Paragon UBC Professor of Psychometrics and Measurement at University of British Columbia (Canada). He is known for his contributions in the fields of statistics, psychometrics, validity theory, and mathematical basis of classical test theory and measurement error models.