This chapter reviews some of the essential ingredients in creating a post-secondary online learning environment that is diverse, inclusive, and promotes connection and engagement across the program lifecycle. Various initiatives to build student engagement and connection are discussed. The authors also argue that while most of the attention on engagement in the educational setting focuses on student engagement, equal consideration must be given to faculty and staff engagement to create the optimal environment.
A diverse mix of voices leads to better discussions, decisions, and outcomes for everyone.
—Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet Inc.
TopIntroduction
The decision to obtain a higher education degree requires many sacrifices. In the long-term view, a student’s decision to pursue a degree is often made to increase one’s financial position, career opportunities, and personal and family well-being; however, in the short-term, students often must sacrifice in these same areas. This multiyear commitment is, therefore, weighed heavily, and institutions must not only prepare students with support resources to be successful, they must also provide an inclusive and welcoming learning environment that lays the foundation for success and promotes the skills and abilities needed to work in a diverse workforce.
Engagement in the online environment is critical to success, and feelings of isolation are often manifested in disconnection in the classroom and other university spaces. Engagement is a component of inclusiveness; if students are not able or willing to interact through the curriculum, clubs, committees, or policy making within the university, key perspectives and voices are missing. Likewise, if faculty and staff lack opportunity to engage within the organization, diverse viewpoints risk being left out. Miller (2021) asserts that:
Inclusion elicits the best effort and broadest perspectives—intellectual, cultural, experiential—of all involved, and elevates the performance of an organization by bringing the diversity inherent in its members to bear.
As such, neither an organization nor the members within it can reach their fullest potential unless they are inclusive, and inclusivity is not enough; they must also be engaging. This chapter reviews some of the essential ingredients in creating a post-secondary online learning environment that is diverse, inclusive, and promotes connection and engagement across the program lifecycle.
TopBackground
Whether in a traditional campus-based program or an online platform, students’ perceptions of a university and their place in it begin forming long before they step into their first class. Every touch point and experience leading up to that start lays the foundation for a student’s identity with the institution, commitment to achieving their goals, and future success in the program. Thus, universities must prioritize the onboarding process by creating opportunities for students to learn about the institution, understand its mission, see how they fit within it and how their goals can be realized, and connect with others (peers, faculty, and staff) sharing in their journey.
Walden’s First-Year Student Progress (FYSP) strategic plan (see Figure 1; Jobe et al., 2016) casts a brighter light upon the onboarding experience of new students preparing to start their programs. Through this plan and the methodology developed to identify gaps in the student experience and address those gaps in an empirical way, multiple initiatives were launched (many of which were aimed at the onboarding stage, prior to the first course). These initiatives focused specifically on increasing connectedness, preparedness, and setting expectations.
Figure 1. First-Year Student Progress (FYSP) methodology