Graduate Students' Communication Practices and Perceived Sense of Community

This study explores the relationship between graduate students' communication practices and their perceived sense of program-level community within a graduate program. The program under study here consists of both traditional on-campus students, as well as students who take classes via a distributedlearning model. This particular program has made a concerted effort to improve its distance education offerings, and to improve information provision on its website to improve the students' sense of community within the program. Self-reported data were collected and analyzed from students (both on-campus and off-campus) enrolled in the graduate program at a midsized Southeastern public university. This study contributes to the body of empirical literature on distance education by providing evidence regarding the relationship between student communication practices and students' perceived sense of community within a distance education program.Given the graduate program's efforts to improve information provision on its programs' website, our interest in examining the data on this program is to analyze communication behaviors, specifically information seeking, and how these information seeking behaviors relate to the students' perceptions of sense of community within the distance education program (hereafter “perceived sense of program community”). We analyze information seeking behaviors because it has been established that, in uncertain environments such as a distance education environment, many individuals use information seeking as a useful strategy for negotiating such an environment (Miller Morrison McCarthy, Pretty, Rovai, 2002).The contemporary distance education literature, discussed in what follows, suggests that carefully-designed courses offered via distance education can be as effective as, or in some cases more effective than, those offered in a more traditional education setting (Overbaaugh Hill, Raven, Karatas McCarthy et al., 1990; Rovai, 2002). Rovai (2002) found a positive, significant relationship between the distance learners' sense of classroom community and students' perceived sense of cognitive learning. It is reasonable to assume that students are less likely to quit their program of study if they perceive that they are learning. While another study found that sense of community in an online class was significantly related to student satisfaction, they did not find that it was significantly related to retention (Drouin, 2008). Clearly, more research needs to be done to understand the relationship between sense of community and student retention.While the field has furthered our understanding of what is required to help students complete individual distance education courses, our study contributes to the body of research in distance education that examines what programs can do to help students successfully complete all courses within the program. We investigate communication practices and perceived sense of program community, which is one piece of the program retention puzzle.We draw upon a landmark study by McCarthy et al. (1990) that investigated burnout in university students. They found a positive relationship between the student's levels of perceived sense of community and their levels of being “burned out.” Additionally, they found that burnout was also related to academic performance. McCarthy et al.'s (1990) research suggests that universities need to consider more than just academics when it comes to the university students' experiences; physical, social and organizational structure that affect students' experiences also need to be considered. McCarthy et al.'s research is related to our study in that it looks at the students' sense of community within their entire collegiate program, not simply one class.Definition. Sense of community is an amorphous concept, to be sure, yet a widely accepted definition of “sense of community” is “a feeling that members have of belonging, a feeling that members matter to one another, and to the group, and a shared faith that members' needs will be met through their commitment to be together” (McMillian of 2009). 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