Goal 1:
Describe the key components of communities of practice to assess the differences in sense of community between males and females.
Goal 2:
Describe the components of classroom community, including sense of connectedness and perceived learning, as measured by Rovai's Classroom Community Scale.
Goal 3:
Discuss the relationship between gender, area of practice, students' native language, and students' overall sense of online community.
The evolution of Internet and Web technologies has created a more innovative concept of building learning communities because of the way individuals communicate and facilitate the creation, refinement, sharing, and use of knowledge. According to Wenger, McDermott, and Snyder (2002) "a community of practice is not just a Web site, a database, or a collection of best practices. It is a group of people who interact, learn together, build relationships, and in the process develop a sense of belonging and mutual commitment. Having others who share your overall view of the domain and yet bring their individual perspectives on any given problem creates a social learning system that goes beyond the sum of its parts" (p. 34). Studies related to classroom community are present in the educational literature, but few studies have addressed classroom community in online instruction of medical professionals.
The purpose of this non-experimental quantitative study is to determine the relationship between sense of classroom community and students' gender as well as students' area of practice in the medical profession in an Online Master's Degree in Education Program for Healthcare Professionals. We anticipated a difference in sense of classroom community for gender, area of practice, and the native language of the student. We expected this outcome because research in other online programs suggests women tend to report a greater sense of classroom community than men (Graff, 2003; Rovai, 2002). Additionally, we anticipated a significant difference in sense of community among the various areas of practice, as well as among the native language of the student.
The setting for this study was a fully online program delivered jointly by a state university and a local children's hospital, both located in the Midwest. The program provides medical professionals with opportunities to enhance their teaching skills through the acquisition of knowledge related to pedagogy and educational research (Lewis & Baker, 2005). This online Master's Degree in Education Program for Healthcare Professionals is the only fully online program offered in the English-speaking world (Cohen, Murnaghan, Collins, & Pratt, 2005). Consequently, the population was quite small. Having a communication channel through which to reach all students enrolled in this unique program, we decided to use a convenience sample and invite all 75 students to complete the online survey used for the study. Based on volunteered responses, the sample consisted of 30 students. Using a convenience sample of 30 students, we administered Rovai's (2002) Classroom Community Survey online. The overall CCS raw score as well as the CCS subscale scores for each student were calculated in Excel. The scores were then entered into SPSS to obtain statistics for the overall scale and two subscales according to gender and area of practice. Four independent-samples t-tests and one-way ANOVA were performed to answer the research questions. Of the 30 total respondents, 50% practiced pediatrics, neonatology, or family medicine, 20% worked in medical education or research, 10% worked in surgery and anesthesiology, and 13.3% practiced in specialty areas. Women respondents made up 70% of the sample. The ages of respondents ranged from 21-60 years of age with 63.2% of respondents in the range of 31-40 years. Four of the respondents indicated that English was not their native language. The independent-samples t-tests showed no statistically significant difference between men (M =59.56, SD = 8.59) and women [M = 54.62, SD = 8.16; t (28) = 1.50, p = .15] including learning and connectedness scores for women and men and the language differences, native and non-native speakers at the p<.05 level. A one-way ANOVA between-groups was conducted to explore the impact of area of practice on overall sense of community as measured by the CCS. Participants were divided into five groups according to their area of practice. The ANOVA was not significant, F(4, 25) = 2.68, p = .06. Although the study sample was small, there is value to studying sense of community among students in the online masters program so that program leaders and instructors can initiate pedagogical changes that will improve the sense of community among students, thereby providing more strategies to improve student satisfaction and fulfillment in online courses. Further research with a larger sample size is necessary to explore this topic in more diverse settings.
Cohen, R. Murnaghan, L., Collins, J., & Pratt, D. (2005). An update on master's degrees in medical education. Medical Teacher, 27 (8), 686-692.
Graff, M. (2003). Individual differences in sense of classroom community in a blended learning environment. The Journal of Educational Media 28(2-3), 204-210.
Lewis, K.O. & Baker, R.C. (2005). Development and implementation of an online master's degree in education program for health care professionals. Academic Medicine, 80 (2), 141-146.
Rovai, A.P. (2002). Development of an instrument to measure classroom community. Internet and Higher Education, 5, 197-211.
Wenger, E., McDermott, R. A., & Snyder, W. (2002). Cultivating communities of practice. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.
