What can we do to help?

Oregon State University has prioritized diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, and it is up to us as educators and those who support teaching and learning to actively co-create a culture that promotes tolerance and inclusion, for our students, our staff, and our community. To do this, we must challenge exclusion and commit to inclusive practices that promote real equity and extend opportunity to all students. University staff and instructors may be intentionally or unintentionally signaling their institution’s, their department’s, or their own levels of inclusion by the policies, rules, statements, systems, symbols, and representations they choose and use, so it is important to reassess what messages we are sending to students. While students may develop feelings of belonging on their own, it is more likely when the community actively, publicly, and earnestly offers a place at the table for everyone.

Ecampus strives to understand the unique issues faced by our online students and implement research-based solutions and strategies for increasing our students’ sense of belonging. Our commitment begins with high-quality, collaborative course design that enables instructors to work directly with the instructional design team to build interaction into course content, supplemented with faculty training opportunities to expose Ecampus instructors to a wide range of facilitation strategies that complement good design.

There are a few general conditions that provide a foundation for belonging that we should be aware of, backed by extensive research.

Support and flexibility

Online students choose our program for the flexibility it offers, and this often means that they are studying outside of business hours, at night and on the weekends. Likewise, their student support needs are likely to come at non-traditional times, so anticipating this and offering support services on demand and for extended times becomes important. Being aware of these needs and creating policies and practices that allow students to get the support they need in a timely manner can be a critical factor in online student success.

Representation

Students need to see themselves represented, both amongst the staff and faculty they interact with and in the course materials they use. When students from marginalized groups see people who openly share their identity or background, they are reassured that they, too, belong. OSU is committed to building and retaining a diverse workforce and has implemented several strategies towards this goal, including a suite of trainings including the Social Justice Education Initiative (SJEI) and Search Advocate program, among others. Faculty and course designers can contribute to these efforts by considering how course content serves to further amplify previously ignored or excluded voices by choosing to include rather than exclude diverse voices, images, perspectives, and ideas.

A safe environment that supports the conditions for learning

We support a safe learning environment when we actively challenge unhealthy beliefs about who can be successful and become more aware of behaviors that may harm others. In practice, this translates into making it clear that our school is a safe space and is not accepting of intolerance, bullying, stereotyping, or harassment. This effort is supported when faculty are knowledgeable about online learning best practices and work to welcome, inspire, engage, and mentor students learning online.

Encouragement and acknowledgement

When we create learning environments that combine high expectations and rigor, we can support students’ achievement by affirming their ability to excel. Recognizing barriers and helping students overcome hurdles helps them build strong identities as scholars. Acknowledging students’ intersecting identities, celebrating diversity, and fostering respectful relationships between students lets students know that they are a valued part of our community.

Additionally, we can help online students create a sense of community and connection to OSU, their peers, and their instructors. Small acts of inclusion can go a long way toward creating a warm, friendly, welcoming space for students.

Connecting with the university

Online students may identify more strongly as an online learner than an OSU student. They may feel unseen in comparison to on-campus students. This may be compounded when multiple, intersecting identities further this sense of disconnection. To combat this, we can strive to reinforce to our online students’ that they are indeed an important part of our community by welcoming new students, celebrating milestones and successes, and providing coaching, tutoring, and resources to support advancement and matriculation. Ecampus sends incoming students an OSU graduation tassel as a reminder that they are part of the OSU community and to encourage them to persevere throughout their studies.

Connecting with other students

Campus affinity organizations, such as OSU’s seven unique cultural centers, and clubs can offer students the chance to meet and become involved with students and staff who share their identity and/or interests. Peer mentorship programs can be another way of providing direct supportive connections to fellow students.

Connecting with support staff

Oftentimes, the first OSU representatives new students interact with are support staff who handle welcome or orientation programs, so they play a large role in setting the stage for belonging by being explicitly inclusive and communicating OSU’s commitment to DEI. Academic Advisors can be crucial to success, helping navigate the policies, procedures, and schedules online students must be aware of. Another key support role is that of the Success Coach, who works closely with students to identify barriers to success, find available resources, develop good study habits, and collaboratively build out plans to achieve academic goals. Online open houses, info sessions, newsletters and engagement events can strengthen online students’ sense of belonging, as can sharing relevant social media channels with online students, providing a substitute experience for on-campus visits and activities. Overall, it is important that university staff meet online students where they are, bringing the campus experience to them as much as possible via the LMS, social media, email, and Zoom.

Connecting with faculty

Undoubtedly, the group that has the most significant impact on online students’ experience of belonging is the faculty they learn from. Students resoundingly report that instructor interaction and feedback are the most influential aspects of online course satisfaction. This is reflective of the reality that instructors play several roles in online classrooms, serving as course manager, technical support, and social facilitator in addition to subject matter experts. This gives instructors of online courses many opportunities to influence how welcome students feel in their online courses, and they communicate this via the implicit and explicit tone of their communications, the learning materials and activities they choose, their course policies, and the feedback they provide.

complex bar chart showing student responses in the Student Academic Experience Survey 2022 — The chart above, from the Student Academic Experience Survey 2022, echoes our internal Ecampus student survey results, with a large proportion of students indicating that instructor access is key to success and happiness in online courses.

Beginning with the syllabus, an instructor signals their own beliefs and attitude towards learning by both what they say and how they say it. If the course lacks face-to-face or synchronous meetings, online students must look at course design, learning materials, and instructor communications for clues about how included they can expect to be. Syllabi written in a warm, welcoming tone serves as an indicator that an instructor first and foremost cares about students, and simple tweaks to syllabus language can go a long way toward conveying this to students. Using language that references learning together, respecting differences, and building of community can reassure students that their instructor cares about them and wants them to succeed. Ecampus recently released updated online and hybrid syllabus templates for the 23-24 academic year, with some sections rewritten in a more inclusive and welcoming tone.

This short video by Ana Lu Fonseca, OSU Assistant Director of Diversity, highlights the importance of using inclusive and affirming language.

Course design and content is another area where instructors can have direct influence on students’ sense of belonging. Ecampus courses are designed via collaboration between an instructional designer and faculty developer, using our Ecampus Essentials as a guideline. Instructors who want to improve their online courses can ensure that they meet not only the essential standards but also the exemplary ones, which represent research-based best practices that help students have better outcomes when learning online.

Creating courses that are accessible for all students is a priority at Ecampus, and our designers often turn to the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) guidelines, which outline concrete steps to make courses more learner friendly for all students. Our OSU Canvas LMS also has built-in accessibility tools, including the UDOIT checker for faculty and Canvas’ own checker in the Rich Content Editor box, that can assist instructors in finding and fixing accessibility issues. We also have Ally, which checks the accessibility of course content, helps fix the content, and helps students by generating alternative forms of content.

Representation is another important factor related to belonging where faculty can have a significant influence. Instructional materials that reflect diverse perspectives can help students understand whose voices, perspectives, and contributions are deemed worthy, valued, and legitimate. Acknowledging and helping students understand how certain groups have contributed to or been left out of certain fields and areas of study is an important facet of challenging and countering negative stereotypes. Instructors can choose to include a wide range of images, stories, and voices in the learning materials for their courses. When students see themselves represented in the course in positive and inclusive ways, they are more likely to be engaged and willing to learn. If materials in a course present a limited viewpoint or show only a small fraction of human races, genders, nationalities, and experiences, students may struggle to find them relevant to their own lives.

Creating a sense of community within a course has a positive effect on students’ sense of belonging, and instructors have opportunities to foster community throughout the term. Structuring courses so that students have varied opportunities to interact with the instructor and fellow students is an important part of community building, especially in asynchronous courses. Group work, peer review, and collaborative projects can help students get to know their classmates, which is another component of belonging. Consider giving students chances to interact both academically and socially. This might include not just offering but actively inviting them to synchronous study sessions, happy hours, or office hours, assigning some group or pair work or peer reviews, or providing forums such as discussion boards or chat tools like Teams or Slack where students can informally interact.

An significant but often unstated role of an instructor in online courses is that of guide, helping students make sense of the course layout, format, and flow as well as framing the big picture when it comes to content and learning outcomes. This can take many overlapping and complementary forms, such as making announcements that recap the prior week or assignments and remind students what is coming and how it connects to the prior lessons, providing study guides, timelines, flowcharts or other big-picture supports, or helping steer online discussions in the right direction. Rubrics are another meaningful way to convey relative importance and weight of different aspects of graded work, with the added benefits of communicating clear expectations and making it easier to grade work fairly.

Related to serving as a guide to course materials, instructors can help students connect to their field of study in more personal and comprehensive ways. How an instructor chooses to address students can facilitate them seeing themselves as practitioners and experts, and by addressing them as future scientists (or artists or historians), can instill a measure of confidence in their self image. Course content can also be adapted to include clear connections to professionals in the field and professional organizations that might be of interest. Helping students become cognizant of the norms, vocabulary, and typical work conditions they can expect can help motivate and prepare students for life and work after graduation, and sets a foundation for belonging within their discipline and track.

Perhaps most important ways an instructor impacts student belonging is how they facilitate a course in progress. Regular communication and clear presence of the instructor within the online course site, along with timely and meaningful feedback on assignments, consistently rise to the top as critical for online student success. These findings underpin many of our Online Teaching Principles, a guide for faculty focusing on the art of facilitating courses online, developed in 2022 to complement our Ecampus Essentials. These principles include suggestions aligned with best practices that support creating an inclusive environment.

Feedback is one of the most critical ways instructors influence students’ learning, and research supports a 24-hour turnaround time for responding to questions during the week and a five-day turnaround for grading and feedback, both essential for online students to be able to progress through course content in a timely manner. How feedback is given is equally important- comments for improvement should be couched in positive and encouraging language, focusing on improvement rather than perfection. Carol Dweck’s concept of growth mindset can be a powerful lens through which to view providing feedback, as it focuses on attitudes towards failure as a part of learning, stressing potential and improvement rather than perfection. Multiple studies confirm that promoting a growth mindset can empower students to take initiative in their learning, build self-efficacy, be more resilient when facing difficulties, better regulate emotions, and persevere through stress and challenges. Instructors can encourage this mindset by framing failure as part of the learning process, praising effort over intelligence, avoiding negative language and insults, and reassuring students of their own capabilities.

Oregon State University’s commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion requires the entire OSU community to commit to understanding how belonging can be nurtured and how inclusion can be extended or denied. When all students, employees, and community members have a seat at the table and feel welcomed, valued, and included, then we are succeeding. A recent update from Executive Director of Student Experiences & Engagement Damoni Wright and Associate Provost & Dean of Students Kevin Dougherty, sums it up well, “Social justice work cannot be done in a vacuum and cannot be done only in one or two departments, it must be understood, committed to, and integrated into every facet of our work, and we are dedicated to continuing our efforts to make this happen… Through our work together, we will continue to positively change our campus and support student success.” This is a goal we all contribute to daily, in many large and small ways, and is work that must continue to be prioritized and supported.

Sources

Ally for Canvas | Learn@OregonState

Belonging and Emotional Safety – Casel Schoolguide

Building Inclusivity and Belonging | Division of Student Affairs

College Student’s Sense of Belonging

Creating a Safe and Respectful Environment in Our Nation’s Classrooms

Cultural Centers | Oregon State University

Decades of Scientific Research that Started a Growth Mindset Revolution

Ecampus Essentials – Standards and Principles – Faculty Support | Oregon State Ecampus | OSU Degrees Online

Establishing Community in Online Courses: A Literature Review

Growth Mindset in the Higher Education Classroom | Center for Learning Experimentation, Application, and Research

Innovate & Integrate: Plan for Inclusive Excellence | Institutional Diversity

Mission, Vision and Values | Oregon State Ecampus | OSU Degrees Online

Online Teaching Principles – Standards and Principles – Faculty Support | Oregon State Ecampus | OSU Degrees Online

Oregon Department of Education

OSU Search Advocate Program

Peer Mentor Program | TRiO | Oregon State University

Social Justice Education Initiative

State of Oregon Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Action Plan

Student Academic Experience Survey 2022

The UDL Guidelines

Update Syllabus – Term Checklist and Forms – Faculty Support | Oregon State Ecampus | OSU Degrees Online

Using a warmer tone in college syllabi makes students more likely to ask for help, OSU study finds | Oregon State University

Utilizing Inclusive and Affirming Language | Institutional Diversity

“Belonging is a universal human need that is fundamentally linked to learning and well-being. It describes an individual’s experience of feeling that they are, or are likely to be, accepted and respected as a valued contributor in a specific environment.”
Structures for Belonging: A Synthesis of Research on Belonging-Supportive Learning Environments

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is a helpful framework when discussing belonging, which falls in the middle, at level three, just above the basics for survival (level one: air, water, food, shelter) and safety (level 2: health, employment, family, security).
Image from Wikimedia Commons

Have you heard the word belonging recently in reference to students and employees? At OSU, it seems to be popping up frequently in conversations and discussions, onboardings and trainings, online and off, becoming a buzzword for those concerned with teaching and learning, recruitment and outreach, employee satisfaction, and student success, and has become a focal point of our ongoing efforts towards diversity, equity, and inclusion. This increased focus on the concept of belonging at OSU is reflected in the university’s 2018 Innovate & Integrate: Plan for Inclusive Excellence, and is echoed by the 2021 Oregon Department of Education’s passing of the Every Student Belongs rule, which states, “It is the policy of the State Board of Education that all students, employees, and visitors in public schools are entitled to learn, work, and participate in an environment that is safe and free from discrimination, harassment, and intimidation.” These initiatives reflect a growing understanding that traditionally prevailing systems of power have historically marginalized certain groups and excluded them from many realms of life, including education, and prioritize a commitment to changing the status quo explicitly and with intention.

At Ecampus, belonging is an area of active study, and our effort to extend the feeling of belonging to our online students is an important part of our mission, vision, & values and our own Inclusive Excellence Strategic Plan’s goals. We realize that our Ecampus students come from a wide range of backgrounds, seek online learning for a variety of reasons, and comprise higher numbers of students from historically marginalized backgrounds, and thus, combined with the nature of online learning, can feel increased isolation and less of a sense of belonging than their on-campus peers.

What is belonging and why is it important?

Belonging is a complex, multi-layered, and changeable quality that is nonetheless very important for student success. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs places belonging in the category of psychological needs, just above the basic needs including food, water, air, safety, and shelter. While there are many definitions, the concept of belonging generally encompasses feeling safe, appreciated, welcomed, valued, and respected in a given situation. Humans learn to search for and interpret signals that they belong or do not belong when entering into new situations or contexts. Marginalized groups have had to learn to be cognizant of where and when they could expect to be excluded and on the alert for cues signaling such. Traditionally, educational institutions have been places of exclusionary practices, often closed to large groups in both policy and practice. Students from marginalized populations, facing this problematic history of exclusion, may be looking for signals and signs that indicate the extent to which they are valued and respected as members of the school community. Students may not be sure they will be accepted in institutions, departments, courses, and other school environments and may be consciously or unconsciously searching for such clues as reassurance that they do, in fact, belong.

Belonging is important for student success because it conveys a host of positive benefits and is a crucial aspect of educational accomplishment. When students find welcoming, inclusive attitudes, see others like themselves being accepted and thriving, and are made to feel safe, protected, supported, and valued, their sense of belonging increases, which in turn allows them to relax and be confident sharing more of their full selves. Students who have a strong sense of belonging show increased academic performance, better attendance, persistence, retention, and motivation, and less likelihood of dropping out. Dr. Terrill Strayhorn, Professor of Urban Education and Vice President for Academic and Student Affairs at LeMoyne-Owen College, in his book College Student’s Sense of Belonging, concludes that “deprivation of belonging in college prevents achievement and wellbeing, while satisfaction of college students’ sense of belonging is a key to educational success for all students.”

In education, as in our society at large, belonging is often related to larger systems that privilege and prefer certain groups and their ideas, beliefs, and ways of being. Those whose race, ethnicity, sexual identity, gender, class, indigeneity, language, or ability are not of the majority are especially likely to be anxious and “on alert” to othering, exclusion, bullying, and stereotyping. This can have dramatic negative short and long term effects, including lowered cognitive capacity, increased stress, and reduced persistence and achievement. Students who lack a sense of belonging may feel uncomfortable in class or group work, unable to concentrate, and may experience self-consciousness and worry, which makes it that much more difficult to attain higher-level needs such as self-confidence, recognition, respect, fulfillment, and achievement. When students face active discrimination, bullying, or other forms of harassment, they may become depressed, choose to disengage, drop courses, or discontinue studying. With such dire consequences, taking the time to understand and assist in ensuring all OSU students are made to feel welcomed and accepted is well worth the effort.

Why do online students sometimes feel less of a sense of belonging?

There are many contributing factors to the disparity between online and traditional students’ development of a sense of belonging, starting with the very nature of the modality in which they study. Students living and studying on campus often have more frequent contact with instructors, campus staff, and other students, both structured and impromptu, providing opportunities to build relationships that can enhance their sense of community and belonging. The pacing of on-campus courses tends to be predictable, with regular meetings during which students often have the chance to ask questions (and receive answers quickly) and get to know fellow students and instructors. Instructors have dedicated class time to review important concepts, check understanding, and provide opportunities for students to get to know them and their fellow students. The traditional on-campus experience is geared towards taking a diverse group of students and building a cohesive community in many ways- students have a wide array of support services available to them, many activities, sports, and clubs they can join, and have a host of opportunities to participate in the rich culture of OSU and in academic and social communities, most of which are easily accessible on campus. Indeed, the very nature of on-campus learning seeks to provide a community for traditional students, many of whom are young and leaving their own homes and communities for the first time.

In contrast, Ecampus courses are asynchronous, featuring no scheduled meeting times, as our students live around the USA and the world. While this format allows for increased access for students who cannot attend in person, the lack of face-to-face interaction can make it difficult for both students and instructors to make personal connections. Unless their courses are carefully designed to provide chances for interaction, conversation, collaboration, and community building, online students may not often interact with their instructors or peers. Online students can experience feelings of isolation, loneliness, and disengagement, which can greatly affect their sense of belonging as an OSU student as well as their success and performance.

Complicating things even further is the tendency to experience digital miscommunication, the concept that humans are less able to infer tone, underlying sentiment, and in general not understand nuance when communicating by text and online, to some extent due to the lack of context and/or visual clues one gets when interacting face to face. A 2016 literature review on the topic of establishing community in online courses found digital communication to be a consistent issue, noting “…the absence of visual meaning-making cues such as gesture, voice tone, and immediate interaction can frustrate students and lead to feelings of isolation and disconnectedness in an online classroom” and recommended that instructors who teach online learn the nuances of these different communication needs.

It must be noted that some online students, who may be older, working full or part time, caring for family, or otherwise already leading (sometimes overly) full lives do not particularly want or need the sense of community that younger traditional students may seek out from their university. They may have little time to devote to community building and little interest in superfluous interaction, shying away from an increased social burden they may not have time and energy to fully commit to. Since we cannot know in advance the detailed makeup of our student body, planning with an assumption that creating belonging is an important aspect of our approach serves online students best.

Stay tuned for Part 2: What can we do to help? for research-based strategies you can use to improve belonging and inclusion.