Workshop 2 – Reflection
Belonging can be a contentious term when it comes to online learning. What are students belonging to? Who dictates this? What happens if individuals don’t want to ‘belong’? It’s been an area that has come up many times in my work as a learning designer (especially post-pandemic) and a main reason I chose the SPARK article ‘Home sweet home achieving belonging and engagement‘ by Stacey Ross and Lee Leewis.
I saw Stacey and Lee present this paper as a talk during the Presence and Belonging in Digital Education Conference in 2021. Stacey opened the session by playing an afro-beats track whilst people were joining the Teams meeting. This was an insight into Stacey’s theory of treating online spaces as extensions of ‘home’ as opposed to ‘non-places, or spaces where individuals feel lonely and disconnected’ (White, 2021).
What do we mean by belonging?
Love and belonging, positioned as the third level in Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, are essential for human potential. Carol Goodenow offers a concise definition within an educational framework:
“Being accepted, valued, included, and encouraged by others (teachers and peers) in the academic classroom and of feeling oneself to be an important part of the life and activity of the class (…) it also involves support and respect for personal autonomy and for the student as an individual”
Carol Goodenow, 1993
Creating a sense of belonging in online spaces?
Stacey created a Miro board for her unit. She designated student-only areas on the board, giving them a sense of autonomy over the space and nurturing feelings of ownership and connection.
We tend to identify notions of ‘home’ as places where we leave our physical possessions knowing that they will be there when we return. In the online environment, or the ‘non-place’, possessions or assets are not permanent. Once we leave a Teams meeting, you can never truly ‘go back.’ To counter this feeling of impermanence, Stacey kept the Miro board open for the entirety of the unit. She let students decide what areas they wanted to explore within the unit, which in turn led to a sense of ‘co-creation…(w)e co-create the board, the space, and each lesson together.’ (Ross and Leewis, 2022).
Stacey and Lee reflected on the relationships within the virtual learning space, including teacher-student, student-student, and student-space connections (adapting Garrison’s Community of Inquiry model). From this, they proposed a new model with three key goals: connection, ownership, and co-creation.
The issue with belonging
Students who feel a sense of community and belonging are more engaged and likely to complete their studies. Felten and Westen (2021), however, suggest ‘mattering’ as a more nuanced concept for belonging, especially for marginalised individuals who are historically disempowered and who might feel that belonging is beyond their reach.
We should ensure that students feel as though they matter as individuals within the context of the group, thus creating an environment where they feel empowered as owners, connected, and able to co-create. If students feel that they matter, they might start to feel increased feelings of belonging as a result of them being acknowledged for who they are, rather than being expected to force themselves to fit into a specific group. Curious to know what others may think!
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References
Felten, P. and Weston, H. (2021) Is ‘mattering’ a more helpful way of thinking about student belonging at university? Edinburgh: Media Hopper Create, The University of Edinburgh. Available at: https://media.ed.ac.uk/media/1_xv45vrlp (Accessed: 20 January 2024)
Goodenow, C. (1993) ‘Classroom Belonging among Early Adolescent Students’, The Journal of Early Adolescence, 13(1), pp. 21–43. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/0272431693013001002.
Leewis, L., & Ross, S. L. (2022) Home sweet home: Achieving belonging and engagement in online learning spaces. Spark: UAL Creative Teaching and Learning Journal, 5(1), 71–81.
Thijm, J. (2023) ‘Mattering vs belonging and the impact of academic advisors: online professional part-time students – a case study’, Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education [Preprint], (29). Available at: https://doi.org/10.47408/jldhe.vi29.1091.
Thomas, L., Herbert, J. and Teras, M. (2014) ‘A sense of belonging to enhance participation, success and retention in online programs’, The International Journal of the First Year in Higher Education, 5(2). Available at: https://doi.org/10.5204/intjfyhe.v5i2.233.
White, D. (2021) ‘Pedagogy, Presence and Placemaking: a learning-as-becoming model of education.’, David White, 17 May. Available at: https://daveowhite.com/learning-as-becoming/ (Accessed: 20 January 2024).
Image credit: Stacey Leigh Ross