The Relationship Between Students' Perceived Sense of Community and Satisfaction, Achievement, And Retention in an Online Course (Report‪)‬

OVERVIEW The question of which interactive methods should be employed within an online class has been a central issue addressed by instructors, researchers, and critics of online courses alike. This issue represents a distinction between pedagogical approaches within face-to-face (FTF) and online environments (Kearsley, 2000; Reeves, Herrington, & Oliver, 2004). In a FTF classroom, instructors are often challenged when planning interactions, constructing the social setting in which students will have the opportunity to discuss, analyze, and exchange information with fellow students and the instructor. Engaging learning experiences are not, after all, always easy to design, develop, and implement. Online instructors face the same challenges, but in the case of the online class, the students are not physically present, which presents additional obstacles (Angeli, Valanides, & Bonk, 2003).