Review by: Ramanau, Ruslan (2005-01-10)

With increasingly extensive use of online conferencing in e-learning worldwide the concept of virtual community has become one of the central research themes in the field during the last decade.

This study attempts to explore relationships between learner perceptions of classroom community and more established personality measures of communicator style and personality-based learning style. According to the author of the study, while computer-mediated communication has become the norm for social interactions in virtual classrooms, its effects on sense of community are yet to be fully understood. While strong sense of community did prove to be positively related to several desirable learning outcomes, no empirical evidence of the interrelationship between learning and communicator styles and learning outcomes has been obtained to date.

The sample of the study consisted of 63 doctoral students, who took an online research methods course, delivered through the Blackboard Content Management System at Regent University in the United States. As part of their coursework the respondents completed an online discussion assignment and discussed their work with the instructor via the Web.

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator was used to evaluate the personality dimension profiles of the participants. The Communicator Style Measure and the Classroom Community Scale were administered to the participants to investigate their preferred communication styles and perceptions of learning community. The second instrument was comprised of 20 self-report items on a five-point Likert scale and included two subscales, which measured key dimensions of classroom community – learning and connectedness.

A multivariate analysis of variance, correlation analysis and non-parametric median tests were used to analyse the obtained data. Based on the results of data analysis and review of relevant literature it was concluded that the instructor was largely viewed by the learners as a facilitator, another member of classroom community. Because all members of the learning community took on the roles of instructors to varying degrees and at different points on the course it was suggested that the online learning environment empowered students to construct social meaning through interaction with one another. On the other hand, the participants did not differ in their views of connectedness and learning, which led the author to conclude that online courses could be structured to build a sense of community among learners regardless of their personality-based learning styles. However, the learners, who were more friendly, open and precise communicators, reported stronger feelings of classroom community.

Despite serious limitations to the generalisability of the study’s findings (e. g. only a single cohort of students on the same course at the same university were studied, there were difficulties in establishing cause-effect relationships among key variables etc.), the findings of this research raise several important issues with respect to effective teacher and learner behaviours in virtual learning environments, which could be explored in follow-up studies.