I understand that the ability to assess school climate for an online environment (or even an entire class) was likely not feasible for a program serving grades 7-12 at the time that this study was published, but the pandemic may provide a unique opportunity to use this assessment to look at school climate for online schooling/classes for these grade levels (to compare with traditional schooling for these grades). If one of the long-term affects of the pandemic is that more online classes/programs are offered to students in grades 7-12 as a "norm," then this opportunity may present itself again later.

I'm interested in learning more about the Kaiser-Gutman Rule. Some information I found online suggests that this rule may be contested or debated in its accuracy or significance, which makes me curious. However, I am not sure if this would affect the results of this study.

Interesting. I wonder why they decided to organize the questions like this.

Oh, this is a great tool for assessing the "readability" of survey questions. I didn't know about the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level score until now.

I wish they explained a bit more about what makes this assessment more applicable for students in distance learning programs than other, similar assessments.

My understanding of factor analysis is that it is a means of assessing unobserved variables (i.e., factors) that may be responsible for observed variables. However, I wasn't sure what "loading" meant. I looked it up and it seems that "factor loading" refers to the "correlation coefficient" of the variable and factor.

I wonder who these faculty members/researchers and their universities are.

I looked this up. It appears to be a Likert scale that evaluates public option (namely used to assess feelings of "alienation").

Is it important to discriminate between the environments of K-12 and higher education campuses? Or does it not matter, since what is being assessed are broad concepts like "sense of belonging?" Would these concepts be different between the two campus types?

I wonder if this suggests that the concept of community is subjective to the community member. For example, if a community member feels that their values to not reflect that of their community, then they may refer to their school climate as "poor," but another community member who feels that their community's values are reflective of their own may refer to their school climate as "positive." If we base the concept of school climate off of the "average" of these responses, then it makes me curious as to whether or not one could alternatively just measure school climate based on the homogeneity of the values of its members.

I wonder how grading students on their communications in online classes (like tracking and assessing the number of forum posts in relation to a "participation score") might affect the students' sense of community or the ability to evolve to the state described here. This might be difficult to determine, since to be fair, some students might not communicate in classroom forums at all if they aren't receiving a score for it.

This is an interesting point. In previous readings, it was revealed that the authority structure of a community (i.e., its leadership, which may include teachers or other authority figures) and the extent to which "followers" feel they can trust or depend on their leadership plays a significant role in determining how positively students/followers rate the social environment and sense of belonging in their community (i.e., how "tight knit" that community is).

I like how Glynn (1981) defines community here, because all these seem like measurable elements (or at least comparatively easy to measure in contrast with more abstract concepts).

This comment is really making me think: I feel that we have done so much to move the academic/learning components of schooling online, but it doesn't seem that we have done nearly as much to move the social components of the campus experience online (like campus clubs, social events, etc.). I wonder what the effect would be of having a large, open chatroom (if feasible) on a college's website; one that would sort of simulate or compensate for the types of socializing that students would typically do with one another "in the halls" in between their classes. I recall asking other students for help with things (like navigating the campus and whatnot) in between classes, but now in an online environment, I typically have to locate and fill out a form or send a formal email to get anything answered. There may be a lot of lost opportunities to make friends/acquaintances this way, since all online communications seem more "high stake" and formal in current e-learning environments (for example, most my communications with my classmates are associated with or tied to my grades right now).

I wonder if this is referencing the self-perception a student has of their identity as "a student" and how significant that identity/role is to them, or if they mean how connected a student feels to the school community (i.e., to what extent they are able to see themselves in the culture of that community and to what extent they can hence align themselves with it). I am interpreting their meaning here to be the latter, although I could see both interpretations affecting student persistence in academia.

I wonder if they mean this in relation to "expectation management" across diverse groups of students, as connected to the previous point, or if they mean this in relation to cultural differentiation, or something else.

Interesting. We were just talking about this in the last module. I wonder how the expectations of WEIRD cultures differ from other cultures in relation to the expectations of online instruction.

The way I am interpreting this, it seems that "school culture" is simply "what the school is like," whereas "school climate" is more related to the perceived "quality" of that environment or culture (i.e., I imagine you could have a positive climate or a negative climate).

Interesting. I had never heard "school culture" framed as a concept that included the physical attributes of a school. I had always interpreted the term "culture" to be meant more literally here (i.e., comparable to what we call "culture" in regards to nations). This is good to know.

I'm interested in these factors, as well. For instance, do students drop-out of online courses, because they aren't learning as much from them when compared to equivocal traditional programs? Or does students' perceptions/notions of online learning result in them thinking it's just "not as serious" as in-person instruction, resulting in greater drop-out numbers? I recall seeing a lot of students on social media recently saying that they felt the online classes they were taking during COVID should be offered at a "discount" compared to the traditional courses, because "online classes aren't as serious," even when they covered the same content and were taught by the same instructor. This perception that students have of online learning as "not being as good/serious/high quality as in-person instruction" might result in greater drop-out rates, regardless whether or not the research actually supports these notions. Similarly, I wonder if it is possible if some students may simply just not have as much experience (or confidence) with learning via online instruction. We often assume that students who are competent at communicating online (like via social media) are therefore equally as competent at learning online in a more high stakes or "formal" setting. However, this may not be true, and students (as well as their teachers) may need to "practice" online learning before they become competent at it. In a personal example, I work for a high school district that had a difficult time reaching students when the pandemic first started and we were made to teach completely online. However, over time, as both our teachers and students became more comfortable with the process, we started seeing our students becoming increasingly receptive to online learning, and some have even gone from openly disliking it to expressing a preference for it (over the course of a year). I am hence curious to see the effect that the pandemic and the associated "year of online instruction for all" will have on this and future generations of students in relation to their receptiveness to online education (and to see if this will ultimately affect the drop-out rates associated with online instruction).

I recall reading a study that indicated that the high drop-out rates that were initially documented for e-learning courses were taken from asynchronous, open courses. These courses were not high stakes (i.e., they were optional and free) nor were they associated with any degree program (like a bachelors), though they offered a certificate of completion. This may have resulted in a lopsided comparison with traditional courses, which are generally high stakes (i.e., students have to pay for them and they are associated with degrees). However, even if the extent of the perceived drop-out gap may have been initially exaggerated as a result of these earlier studies, it does appear (in later studies) that online courses that are comparable to traditional courses in stakes/value still experience a somewhat higher drop-out rate. Therefore, I am interested in learning more details about these numbers.